Crypto platform glitch briefly makes traders trillionaires

A glitch on the cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase resulted in many users believing they had become wealthier than the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, as balances shot up to tremendous amounts.

The glitch affected both Coinbase and Binance-owned price-tracking website CoinMarketCap on Tuesday before it was fixed and the numbers came down to their legitimate amounts. Unfortunately, those lucky enough to see their balances skyrocket by trillions of dollars were unable to sell their inflated cryptocurrency due to the glitch being merely an error in the display.

In a statement after the chaos on Tuesday, Coinbase announced that “the display issue” had been resolved.

“Non-tradable assets on [Coinbase] are no longer appearing inflated, and assets on Coinbase Wallet should reflect the correct market value. Again, this did not impact trading,” the company declared, apologizing for “any confusion.”

CoinMarketCap issued a more light-hearted statement, tweeting, “How did it feel to be a trillionaire for a couple hours?” and then advising traders to cancel their prematurely booked Forbes interviews.

Twitter was immediately flooded with memes mocking traders desperately trying to cash in their illusory gains.

Not everyone found the glitch funny, however. While many cryptocurrency traders enjoyed their brief moment as virtual trillionaires, others raised concerns about security issues on the platform.

“This won’t help Coinbase or the sense of security within the space. Big question is, will it hurt the sense of stability?” questioned one person on social media. “I’m guessing not. But if [Bank of America] did it, oh man, stock price disaster.”