Pyth Bitcoin glitch
Occurred: September 2021
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Bloomberg reports that the recent 90% collapse in the price of Bitcoin from around USD 41,000 to USD 5,402 was likely due to a glitch on crypto data network Pyth.
According to a Pyth investigatory report 'The issue was caused by the combination of (1) two different Pyth publishers publishing a near-zero price for BTC/USD and (2) the aggregation logic overweighting these publishers’ contributions and both publishers encountered problems related to the handling of decimal numbers.'
Whilst the impact on Bitcoin investors remains unclear, it seems some financial trading systems automatically sold Bitcoin in response to the apparent drop in price.
Operator: Pyth
Developer: Pyth
Country: USA
Sector: Banking/financial services
Purpose: Provide pricing information
Technology: Pricing algorithm
Issue: Accuracy/reliability
Transparency: Black box
Page info
Type: Incident
Published: September 2021