The glitch caused the value of a single Bitcoin to reach almost $900 billion.
By Michael Kan
December 15, 2021
If you own some cryptocurrency, then you may have felt like you won the lottery on Tuesday afternoon. That’s because the prices for Bitcoin and other virtual currencies suddenly skyrocketed to insane levels.
Unfortunately, the price jump wasn’t real. Instead, a glitch at Coinbase and CoinMarketCap seems to be behind the cryptocurrency surge, deflating the hopes of numerous cryptocurrency holders.
At one point, the glitch caused the value of a single Bitcoin to reach over $878 billion. As a result, cryptocurrency investors suddenly saw their wallets soar to millions to even trillions of dollars in value.
The glitch also spilled over into other cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum and Ripple, sending their values up by a staggering 1 million plus percent.
The sudden price rise caused many cryptocurrency holders on social media to post (perhaps jokingly) about becoming rich, and quitting their jobs
Meanwhile, other users immediately suspected something was wrong, and began to question if Coinbase or CoinMarketCap had been hacked.
Coinbase and CoinMarketCap didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But both services have posted notices on Twitter, notifying users that the price increases were not real.
“We're aware some customers are seeing inflated values for non-tradable crypto assets on Coinbase.com and Coinbase Wallet. This is a display issue only and does not impact trading,” Coinbase wrote in a tweet.