- On December 14th, prices of cryptocurrencies on CoinMarketCap ballooned to billions of dollars.
- The company said that the glitch was from a bug and not a hack from bad actors.
- The charts could be construed as being quite revealing into the future standings of assets.
While the cryptocurrency community shared jokes about CoinMarketCap’s glitch, the scrambling might be telling of the future of the ecosystem. As prices soared, Bitcoin was ranked 5th as Ethereum sat at the top with a price of $512 billion.
Mere Glitch Or Prophecy?
CoinMarketCap, a price aggregator website for cryptocurrencies seemed to suffer a glitch that led to prices skyrocketing to billions of dollars. Stablecoins were also affected as USDC and USDT were trading at $88,187,261.21 and $99,725,578,248.02 respectively during the episode.
Under the new prices, Ethereum had the largest market capitalization, trading at $512 billion. USDC, BNB, and USDT occupied the second, third and fourth place respectively. Bitcoin was ranked fifth and was trading at around $351 billion, with DAI and Solana coming in sixth and seventh place.
The glitch could be a rare glimpse into the future of cryptocurrencies. A future where Ethereum is King and Bitcoin falls from its pedestal because of its rigidity and conservatism. Ethereum’s transition to Proof-of-Stake and its track record as being a first-mover for DeFi, NFTs, and DApps would be instrumental in its quest to the top.
In the future, it will not be an oddity for a stablecoin to occupy second place and USDC’s position is hinged on the impressive growth that it has recorded since its launch. Founded in 2018, USDC currently has a market capitalization of $41.63 billion and has not attracted the ire of regulators like USDT. Although Tether’s USDT has a larger market capitalization at the moment, trouble with regulators like the CFTC over its reserves might hinder the stablecoin’s growth in the future.
Bitcoin in fifth place may be due to the asset’s slow pace in adopting smart contract technology. Lingering questions about the asset’s environmental impact with mining could play a major role as the asset falls down the ranking as some top Bitcoin developers fall down the rankings.
Not A Hack
CoinMarketCap has revealed that the price spike was due to a bug and not the work of hackers. The issue was promptly resolved by the team, followed by an apology to the users.
“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. Apologies for the inconvenience,” CoinMarketCap tweeted.
Following the episode, jokes were made by the crypto community to lighten the mood. CoinMarketCap asked users what it felt like to be a trillionaire for a couple of hours as their PR team seemed to have handled the situation well.
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