On Tuesday evening, Coinbase users checked their accounts and discovered massive gains, leading some to believe they’d become billionaires until the company clarified on social media that it was a glitch.
Coinbase acknowledged on Twitter that some of its customers were seeing “inflated values” after social media users reported huge cryptocurrency gains that bumped their assets into the millions around 21.00GMT.
Nairametrics confirmed that users in Nigeria were also affected by the glitch. Chinedu JohnGordon’s account went from $2099 to a whopping $13,541,335.98.
He told Nairametrics that after noticing the glitch he went to check his wallet and saw it went parabolic beyond the boundaries of common sense.
He added “I thought of swapping but remembered it’s just a glitch and won’t work so just enjoyed the view of being able to visualise being a multimillionaire in both naira and dollars”
Coinbase said the malfunction was a display issue only and had not impacted trading — it said it resolved the issue on the website in roughly less than 2 hours.
What you should know
- This comes only a week after some Coinbase users launched a campaign demanding that the business pay refunds after a system glitch in mid-November reportedly locked some clients out of their accounts, stopping them from trading for weeks.
- Other cryptocurrency exchanges, such as Binance, have also experienced trading problems. The platform blocked some users from withdrawing dogecoin in November, prompting Tesla CEO, Elon Musk to criticize the company, saying that investors “should be protected from errors that are not their fault.”
- The problem was caused by an “issue with the newest doge wallet,” according to Binance. Hundreds of users have filed arbitration proceedings against Binance, claiming damages after a bug in May locked them out of their accounts and prohibited them from trading.
