Crypto Prices on CoinMarketCap Go Berserk Stirring Hack Suspicions, Reactions Flood Twitter

Amid the rising cases of crypto-related hacks, a weird instance left the followers of cryptocurrency website CoinMarketCap scratching their heads. On the eve of Tuesday, December 14, CoinMarketCap, touted as one of the biggest crypto websites globally, began flashing wildly erroneous prices for Bitcoin, Ether, and several altcoins. Relatively unknown cryptocurrencies were also being displayed in the list of top ten crypto coins on the website. The matter emerged to be one of the trending topics of discussions on Twitter, with several people suspecting a hack attack on CoinMarketCap.

The price of Bitcoin being displayed on the website was a whopping $789,432,690,634 (roughly Rs. 60,05,056 crore), whereas Etherprice was being shown as $38,884,629,258 (roughly Rs. 2,95,787 crore) per token.

Among random altcoins that made it to the list of the top ten cryptocurrencies on CoinMarketCap, Sora and Hex secured significant spots.

Soon after, CoinMarketCap followers opened floodgates of “I am a millionaire” jokes and hack attack conspiracy theories on Twitter. A bunch of hashtags including #CoinMarketCap, #CoinMarketCapGlitch, and #CoinMarketCapHacked have been trending on Twitter since.

The crypto website addressed the situation on Twitter with a rather funny angle.

In a now deleted tweet, CoinMarketCap had acknowledged the issue.

“Our website is currently undergoing Price Issues. The Engineering team is aware of incorrect price information appearing on (the website). We are currently investigating and will update this status when we have more information,” the tweet read.

It remains unclear why has the post been taken off Twitter.

Later, the platform informed its followers that the “issue has been fixed”, not stating if its servers detected any kind of a breach attempt.

Meanwhile, hack attack fears among crypto users seem to be growing by the day.

A recent report on DarkWebLink revealed that cryptocurrency-related crimes in 2020 have amounted to around $10.52 billion (roughly Rs. 79,194 crore).

The number of crypto hacks targeting investors, gaming platforms as well as exchanges have also spiked in recent times.

Last week, crypto-gaming ecosystem called Vulcan Forged fell prey to a hack attack, losing $140 million (roughly Rs. 1,062 crore) worth of crypto assets.

Recently, a hack cost crypto-exchange Bitmart $196 million (roughly Rs. 1,479 crore) after the money stored in the form of various cryptocurrencies was stolen.

In October, a major hack cost Ethereum-powered lending protocol called “Cream Finance” $130 million (roughly Rs. 972 crore) worth of crypto assets.

Earlier in November, US’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had said that cyber scammers are making innocent people use physical cryptocurrency ATMs and digital QR Codes to complete malicious transactions and dupe them of their assets.