Bitcoin Price Shockingly Plunges To $5,402 After Pyth Error

The price of Bitcoin plunged by 90% Monday due to an error made by a cryptocurrency data network run by Wall Street players, sending Twitter users in a flurry.

Pyth Network, an online cryptocurrency data platform known for being a reliable source of pricing information on assets, briefly listed Bitcoin’s price as $5,402 Monday. However, the plunge in Bitcoin price was not reflected on other platforms tracking cryptocurrency prices.

“Between 12:21 and 12:23 UTC the Pyth BTCUSD aggregate price was below $40,000 – the lowest price reported was $5,402 with a confidence interval of $21,623 (4x the asset reported price) for a single slot – which was off-market relative to the BTC price available on other markets,” Pyth tweeted.

It was later revealed that the 90% drop in Bitcoin price was an error. Officials for the cryptocurrency data network said they are investigating the incident.

“Engineers are continuing to investigate the cause and a full report is in the works,” the platform said in a subsequent tweet.

Monday’s error follows a recent problem wherein an outage at Solana blockchain, which is connected to Pyth Network, took down the cryptocurrency data platform for more than 17 hours on Sept. 14, according to Bloomberg.

It is unclear how Pyth’s recent error affected the price of Bitcoin. Bonfida said the error caused a “series of liquidation events on the Audaces protocol BTC-PERP market.”

The error drew massive reactions from social media users, with one Twitter user claiming the unintentional plunge was a “warning.”

“Pyth wasn't a bug. It was a warning,” Kevin Sekniqi, a computer science researcher and an angel investor, wrote.

“What if pyth was right,” another person with username Monkey Rothschild wrote.

A Twitter user named Nemissa also posted a reaction to the plunge with a short video showing road bikers crashing into each other to signify the series of liquidation events following Pyth’s error.

“Live feed of Pyth Network's oracle delivering real-time $BTC price to Solana dApps, causing a series of liquidation events,” the user wrote.

As of Tuesday, the price of Bitcoin moved back to $42,000, according to Pyth.