Prices and Markets

Coinbase bug makes bitcoin punters overnight billionaires

A bug in the popular Coinbase app turned its punters into overnight billionaires for a few hours yesterday evening.

Crypto data aggregator CoinMarketCap experienced a technical fault that resulted in eye-popping figures for prices, market capitalizations and more.

The bug was live for about one hour and has now been fixed.

In a tweet at around 10pm, the site’s operators acknowledged the pricing issues, saying that “[t]he Engineering team is aware of incorrect price information appearing on [CoinMarketCap]. We are currently investigating and will update this status when we have more information.”

According to the website, Bitcoin’s market cap appears to be $14.7 quintillion, when it is actually closer to $1 trillion.

“How did it feel to be a trillionaire for a couple hours?” the site, which is owned by crypto exchange Binance, said in a follow-up tweet.

As expected, the bug triggered a wave of social media attention.

Here’s what people had to say:

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Jack Peat

Jack is a business and economics journalist and the founder of The London Economic (TLE). He has contributed articles to VICE, Huffington Post and Independent and is a published author. Jack read History at the University of Wales, Bangor and has a Masters in Journalism from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

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