The prices of cryptocurrencies posted by Coinbase Global Inc. and popular data provider CoinMarketCap.com suddenly went crazy Tuesday, with many tokens displaying spectacular gains that some users shouting about huge windfalls and others scratching their heads.
New Delhi (India): The prices of cryptocurrencies posted by Coinbase Global Inc. and popular data provider CoinMarketCap.com suddenly went crazy Tuesday, with many tokens displaying spectacular gains that some users shouting about huge windfalls and others scratching their heads.
According to CoinMarketCap.com, the problem has been rectified. Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, stated the same thing on Twitter, adding that trade was unaffected. Coinbase added a few minutes later that it was still looking into asset price and trade issues in Coinbase Wallet, which allows clients to manage their crypto assets. Neither company was able to explain what went wrong.
“Everyone tunes into those disruptions, so to the extent that they all use the same data source, and when there’s a problem and prices are really off, that can create herd behaviour to drive investment decisions,” Rosario Ingargiola, founder of Bosonic, a crypto clearing and settlement platform, said.
Many exchanges have had problems processing transactions during periods of strong trading volume, owing to technical glitches. Since the inception of cryptocurrencies, the feature of anonymity has been a selling factor, but it has also made it harder to handle hacks and thefts.
“We haven’t discovered any evidence yet to imply that today’s problem was caused by an external entity,” CoinMarketCap.com stated in a statement, amid speculation on Twitter that the site had been hacked. The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, owns CoinMarketCap.com.
In a tweet earlier today, Coinbase stated that certain clients were seeing inflated values for “non-tradable” crypto assets due to a display problem. Customers were still sharing screenshots of their winnings and their unexpectedly higher balances on social media.
In its Twitter feed, CoinMarketCap made jokes about the situation, while some users said they had a “heart attack” when they saw the unusual prices. Some quipped that the exaggerated pricing represented where bitcoin would be in 2026.
The glitch did not amuse everyone.
“If this continues, people will go for data elsewhere,” said Aaron Brown, a crypto investor and Bloomberg Opinion contributor.