A few days ago (December 14), many of us went to bed richer than Elon Musk, or at least, this was what CoinMarketCap told us. But, alas, it was a lie!
Wait, what happened?
Bitcoin blew past its previous ATH to reach $800 billion overnight!
Ethereum shot up to $50 billion in a matter of a minute!
And our friend Shiba Inu smashed the $3000k level... what the frog?
Well... it was just fake figures though it made us live a one-hour wet dream...😂
What really occurred is that a serious "glitch" plagued CoinMarketCap, the top price data provider in the cryptocurrency space, which made it show outrageous gains for some cryptos.
What made it really serious is the number of applications that get data from CMC to present their crypto prices. The high-profile Trust and Exodus wallets were among the victims. Even Coinbase relies on CMC data to display values of cryptos it doesn't list, so yea, it was among the affected products too...
Shortly after the glitch, most of the crypto community took the matter with a sense of humor. Some jokingly demanded their previous gains and compensation for moral damage after their "return to poverty", and others compared their states before and after the glitch
However, as is often the case, when a failure occurs, finger-pointing follows...
This often happens even between tech behemoths.
In fact, the CEO of Crypto.com and the COO of Coinbase both rushed to put the entire blame on CoinMarketCap for the incorrect figures seen on the site for about an hour.
The former went further to state that Crypto.com is working to remove the "unreliable price feed" from their product.
On one hand, it might be nothing other than "fishing in troubled waters". After all, we shouldn't forget that CMC's owner is Binance which is the most popular cryptocurrency exchange and a direct rival to the likes of Crypto.com and Coinbase. So, they have every incentive to take advantage form the bad situation CMC has gone through in order to discredit it for their interest.
On the other hand, I still believe that CMC takes responsibility for what happened and takes further responsibility to explain why and how it happened, especially about five days after the incident.
While most of the crypto community suspect that it was only a bug on the API, others refer to a hack that may have taken place there
And what adds fuel to the fire is the complete silence from CMC
Leaving its competitors aside, it seems to be still ignoring inquiries from crypto media outlets, which leaves a big question mark.
CoinMarketCap has not yet responded to Decrypt's request for more information about whether the error was the result of a glitch or hack.
We often watch data on CMC with the same browser we use to get into our centralized exchange account, Metamask wallet account, email account, and other password-protected accounts.
Fixing the "bug" and moving on without saying anything about is not something we expect from the largest crypto data aggregator, right?
How would we trust to enter CMC anymore if we are not even sure about the current situation there?
After all, crypto is the perfect target for hackers to steal due to its anonymity features, and going to a site with low transparency policies is the last thing I'd like to do... at least this is my opinion on the matter
What do think about the CMC "glitch"?
Do you still use it to get crypto price data?
I'm keen to learn your view ...