Bitcoin, Cardano, Ethereum, and Everything Else is Still Down 99% on CoinMarketCap

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Prices of bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, had been down 99% on crypto monitoring web site CoinMarketCap. But don’t fear, your bitcoins aren’t all of the sudden nugatory. The excessive drop in costs was on account of a glitch on the web site, which surfaced throughout the early hours of Wednesday.

The glitch wrongly displayed cryptocurrency buying and selling costs and was solved after almost an hour. Pricing information has since come again to regular at press time, however information for all-time highs for cryptocurrencies stays defective. For instance, bitcoin’s all time excessive remains to be being displayed as $8.6 million on CoinMaketCap, which is much past its $69,000 peak in May 2021, as per CoinGecko.

Sites like CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko are gatekeepers of the crypto world for retail audiences. They monitor pricing and buying and selling information on crypto exchanges in real-time — referencing the info towards one another for a double-check — earlier than publishing costs on their web site.

This means if bitcoin is proven buying and selling at $49,000 on CoinMarketCap, the determine is calculated by recording the precise buying and selling costs on a number of trusted crypto exchanges.

But as with all issues expertise, errors do happen. A bug on CoinMarketCap wrongly displayed the costs of all cryptocurrencies early Wednesday, whilst change information itself remained correct.

This led to the value of bitcoin being displayed as excessive as $789 billion, giving it a market capitalization of $14.7 quintillion. Other large-cap cryptocurrencies like ether and cardano witnessed comparable woes, reaching costs as excessive as $757,200 and $256 respectively. The actual costs, at press time, are a extra tamer $3,867 and $1.25.

The glitch induced the likes of Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov to suggest decentralized alternate options to offer pricing information.

“This recent glitch is exactly why blockchain applications and smart contracts need to use decentralized oracle networks like Chainlink,” he mentioned in a message to CoinDesk. “Relying on a single oracle, or a single source of data, is a recipe for disaster that undeniably puts user funds at risk.”

Also, some Decentralized Finance (DeFi) initiatives that use CoinMarketCap information halted their choices as a measure to guard their mechanisms. “Due to an error with the CoinMarketCap API, all DeFiChain Vaults have automatically been halted, for now, ensuring the safety of your loans,” said DeFiChain, a bitcoin-centric lending service.

DeFi protocols depend on sensible contracts for decentralized companies like lending and borrowing, utilizing pricing information from third-party companies to make sure merchandise provided to customers are according to market costs.

Meanwhile, CoinMarketCap addressed the glitch and detailed the following steps in a tweet this morning, “Following the irregularities we observed on our platform this afternoon, despite the issue having been fixed, we will be rebooting our servers as a final step in accordance with our internal remediation plan.”

Following the irregularities we noticed on our platform this afternoon, regardless of the problem having been fastened, we might be rebooting our servers as a last step in accordance with our inside remediation plan. Apologies for the inconvenience.

— CoinMarketCap (@CoinMarketCap) December 15, 2021

However, pricing information for all-time excessive information on CoinMarketCap stays defective at press time.