“Data Issues” on CoinMarketCap.com over the weekend badly skewed crypto coin price data on at the popular website over the weekend, causing a flurry of confusion on CryptoTwitter.
CoinMarketCap attributed the issues to problems with the data feed emanating off coins linked to the controversial ‘stable coin’ Tether.
“WTF is happening to CoinMarketCap(?),” tweeted ‘Lauriana 90’ along with a screenshot from CoinMarketCap showing small cap cryptocurrencies like NEM and GNT trading suddenly at 100x and more.
Restored CoinMarketCap data at the time of writing indicates that NEM is presently trading at around 14 cents, and GNT is going for 22 cents.
Twitter users also noted huge price increases indicated for the value of Bitcoin (5x) as well as the complete disappearance of the Tether listing itself.
https://twitter.com/karbonbased/status/1025408374907842560
Veteran crypto trader Nick Cote joked about “the return of alt season” indicated by the falsely “mooning” data.
ALTSEASON IS BACK!!!
Oh wait, it's just a huge problem at @CoinMarketCap pic.twitter.com/lGMyrjodZz
— Nick Cote (@mBTCPiz) August 3, 2018
Many crypto traders have been waiting for a return of the exaggerated altcoin price leaps that characterized 2016-17, returns that have since been dampened by better info about altcoin value, or lack thereof, and a downturn in overall markets.
CoinMarketCap tweeted August 3rd that they were, “aware of an issue with the data we are pulling in,” and were investigating, and later that day, characterized the issue as “a glitch” or “price calculation error on Tether.”
We apologize for the glitch earlier. There was a price calculation error on Tether which caused any listing with a Tether market to become artificially inflated. We will release a post mortem in the near future giving more details and our plans for preventing this in the future.
— CoinMarketCap (@CoinMarketCap) August 3, 2018
Tether, a so-called “stable coin” cryptocurrency issued by associates of the Bitfinex crypto exchange, has long been the object of skepticism in the cryptosphere.
The company claims that every Tether coin they issue is backed by one US dollar held by the company in reserve, but Tether has never completed an independent audit of its finances and has had trouble finding a bank willing to host its accounts.
[clickToTweet tweet=”The company claims that every Tether coin they issue is backed by one US dollar held by the company in reserve, but Tether has never completed an independent audit of its finances” quote=”The company claims that every Tether coin they issue is backed by one US dollar held by the company in reserve, but Tether has never completed an independent audit of its finances”]
Tether coins now pervade numerous crypto trading systems across the globe because, unlike cash, tethers can be easily arbitraged between exchanges.
Many fear that Tether coins have been used to “pump” the value of small cap crypto coins or have simply been ‘printed’ by creators ‘from thin air’ and traded for bitcoins with real value.
Tether coins pour substantial amount of hot air into crypto markets, they say, and many see the inevitable collapse of Tether as something of a foregone conclusion.
As the controversy about pricing at CoinMarketCap unfolded, a cofounder of the joke cryptocoin Dogecoin, Jackson Palmer, tweeted:
https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/1025411861754175489