Crypto investors who were checking up on their holdings this afternoon were likely stunned at what they saw. Gains appeared in the millions, or even billions of dollars for some coins. Other coins appeared drained to zero. Shiba Inu (CCC:SHIB-USD) fans saw their favorite pupcoin listed above Bitcoin (CCC:BTC-USD) in terms of market capitalization. Unfortunately, these data points are wildly incorrect. It appears that the CoinMarketCap website is experiencing a glitch; the site’s showing off massive crypto spikes and sending investors into a state of major confusion.
At around 4:00 p.m. Eastern, CoinMarketCap.com began showing inaccurate data for all of the cryptos listed on the website. The site’s data for Bitcoin, for example, showed a value of over $836 billion and a market cap of $16 quintillion. Remember, Bitcoin began the day at just over $42,000. Data for transaction volume is not available.
The glitch is throwing social media into disarray as well. Just minutes after this glitch happened, Twitter became ablaze with tweets under the #CoinMarketCap hashtag — to the tune of over 16,000 posts. Investors seem to be taking things in stride for the most part, taking the opportunity to poke fun at the site or reiterate their bullishness on the future of cryptocurrency.
CoinMarketCap Glitch Fabricates Massive Crypto Spike, Triggers Other Site Glitches
The apparent CoinMarketCap glitch is a hilarious way to cap off a slow Tuesday for the asset class. While many cryptos either continue to pare losses in a continuation of a hard week, others have been stagnating. Of course, the massive gains caught investors’ attention. The crypto spike is also helping to expose the reliance of other websites on CoinMarketCap for their data.
CoinMarketCap is the most popular database for crypto data by far. But while it’s a very popular site for users to look at charts and learn about new coins and tokens, it’s also what many major outlets use to showcase crypto for their own users.
Since CoinMarketCap’s glitch first began, a slew of other websites have seen the same issues. Yahoo Finance, for example, is showing its users the same price fluctuations. Trust Wallet, one of the most popular crypto wallets, is seeing the same issues, since it also uses CoinMarketCap’s data. In fact, since this glitch first reared its head, the section of Trust’s website explaining is pricing data has crashed from an apparent flood of traffic. Even some crypto news outlets are bearing the burden of this technical error; after poking fun at CoinMarketCap, CoinTelegraph’s data was also quickly thrown into disarray.
Hey @CoinMarketCap, you doing ok there buddy? pic.twitter.com/WfXwpSmURU
— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) December 14, 2021
If the glitch is showing anything, it shows that there is a heavy reliance on CoinMarketCap for data. Indeed, one of the site’s biggest competitors, CoinGecko, is still showing crypto price data as normal. In the midst of all this craziness, CoinGecko would be remiss to get in on the CoinMarketCap jostling.
Our website is currently undergoing Price Issues
The Engineering team is aware of incorrect price information appearing on https://t.co/3AD93ocjMp.
We are currently investigating and will update this status when we have more information. 👍 🙏
— CoinMarketCap (@CoinMarketCap) December 14, 2021
So what is the bottom line? It is unclear exactly what happened to cause a faux crypto spike in prices. However, CoinMarketCap has released an official statement (as well as a few jokes), alerting users that its engineering team is looking into the price issues. After users began reporting a Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) glitch, that site’s support account similarly reported that it was looking into it, although Coinbase reassured users it was a display issue only.
On the date of publication, Brenden Rearick did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.
