"Crypto Prices Go Haywire on Coinbase, CoinMarketCap.com"
Primary Source βIncident Details
Some people were briefly elated or devastated when they looked at Coinbase or CoinMarketCap, both major cryptocurrency trackers. A glitch caused some cryptocurrency investments to appear to have surged in value by millions or billions of percentage points; others saw their investments appear to tank to nearly nothing. Some DeFi projects relying on data from Coinbase halted trading, and erroneous data from the glitch persisted into the following day. CoinMarketCap made light of the glitch on Twitter, writing, “How did it feel to be a trillionaire for a couple hours? π” Hopefully no one quit their job based on their mistaken windfall! At least one person speculated that bots relying on APIs from these services may have traded on the “market movement”, and one project relying on their data reported losing around β¬300,000 (about $340,000) due to the relative value of their assets being inaccurate.
Total loss estimated at $340,000.
Technical Details
- Initial Attack Vector
- Software bug / unintentional loss
- Vendor / Product
- Crypto tracker bugs
Timeline
- 2021-12-14 Breach occurred
- 2021-12-14 Publicly disclosed