Veröffentlicht von Bitcoin temporarily loses top spot on CMC due to bug
Wrapped Bitcoin, the tokenized twin of Bitcoin, has for a few hours taken the top spot on CoinMarketCap
Yesterday, Bitcoin’s market capitalisation was briefly overtaken by Wrapped Bitcoin, after the tokenized version suddenly gained thousands of trillions of dollars in value.
WBTC showed for a few hours a colossal market cap of about $432 billion (the global money supply, including derivatives, is estimated at $1.2 trillion, according to Rankred.com). The Bitcoin Up token topped the list of all assets, even Bitcoin (BTC), which had a valuation of around $733 billion at this time.
However, crypto enthusiasts and maximalists need not worry about this usurpation of Bitcoin’s throne. The huge increase was caused by a CoinMarketCap glitch, which showed Wrapped Bitcoin’s (BTC) valuation higher than all other assets on the planet combined.
A CoinMarketCap spokesperson explained to Cointelegraph:
„The bug was caused by a stray bid form, which indicated incorrect values for WBTC’s outstanding bid, one of the inputs that affects the ranking position. The problem was quickly resolved. Unfortunately, we couldn’t keep it ‚hidden‘ either.“
A Google search for the number 432,949,247,432,865,664 shows the alleged market value achieved by Wrapped Bitcoin:
CoinMarketCap promptly rectified the glitch, returning WBTC to its rightful position: 13th in the rankings, with a market cap of around $4 billion at the time of writing. Before the glitch was completely fixed, however, WBTC remained in first position for a few hours, even after its market cap was corrected.
But what exactly is WBTC?
It is a tokenized version of Bitcoin on Ethereum. This allows participants to use WBTC within the Ethereum ecosystem, as the network uses a different blockchain. In this way, participants can use Bitcoin for Ethereum-based activities, such as decentralised finance. Each WBTC has the same value as 1 BTC, guaranteed at a 1:1 ratio by real Bitcoins managed by a custodian, as specified by BitGO in a blog post.
Prior to this incident, only one other asset managed to outperform Bitcoin on CoinMarketCap, at the height of lockdowns to counter the pandemic when toilet paper had become one of the world’s most desirable assets. On 31 March 2020, Toilet Paper Token overtook Bitcoin, but it was just an April Fool’s joke.