American cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has experienced a glitch on its platform, causing users’ account balances to read an all-time low. This incident occurred on February 29 and resulted in a $100 billion loss in Bitcoin market cap within just 15 minutes. The glitch coincided with Bitcoin’s price surge past $64,000, but the outage caused the price to drop to $59,000 on the platform. However, Bitcoin has since recovered and is currently trading at $66,484.33 with a 5.84% increase in the last 24 hours.
This is not the first time such an issue has occurred on Coinbase. There was a similar incident less than a week prior, where customers experienced zero balances on their accounts. Coinbase believes that this time, the bug may only be a display problem. In addition to the zero balance issue, increased latency has also been reported. Despite these disruptions, Coinbase assures customers that their assets have not been compromised and that trading on the platform is still operational.
It is unclear what caused these glitches or if they are related to the surge in Bitcoin’s price. However, it is worth noting that similar technical issues have happened in the past within the Coinbase ecosystem and have been associated with sharp moves in Bitcoin’s price.
Coinbase’s trading volume dominance for BTC/USD markets recently reached a yearly high of 53%. This data was provided by Ki Young Ju, co-founder of crypto analytics platform CryptoQuant. CoinMarketCap also confirmed that the cumulative volume on Coinbase over the past 24 hours was 72,570 BTC, equivalent to $4,791,725,299.
Some speculate that such significant growth in trading volume could have triggered the activation of the bug causing zero balances on users’ accounts. While these are merely speculations, market stakeholders are closely monitoring Coinbase as a result.
In conclusion, Coinbase has experienced a glitch on its platform that caused users’ account balances to read an all-time low. This incident coincided with Bitcoin’s price surge, but the outage caused a temporary drop in the price on Coinbase. Despite these disruptions, Coinbase assures customers that their assets are safe and trading is still operational. The cause of these glitches is unclear, but similar technical issues have occurred in the past within the Coinbase ecosystem. Market stakeholders are closely watching Coinbase as it remains under scrutiny.