Bitcoin briefly dethroned by unknown altcoin due to CoinGecko glitch

CoinGecko, one of the largest cryptocurrency tracking websites in the world, has suffered a major glitch on Friday morning, with Bitcoin (BTC) mistakenly losing its position as the largest digital currency by market capitalization to a lesser-known altcoin.

The list of top-valued cryptocurrencies on CoinGecko briefly went somewhat irrelevant, with the BTC market cap temporarily falling behind a token known as Relevant (REL).

As of 07:20 am UTC, REL was mistakenly placed at the top of the most-valued cryptocurrencies on CoinGecko, with the market cap going insane at $6.5 septillion, or way more than all other assets in the world combined.

The glitch also affected the total crypto market capitalization on CoinGecko, with the market cap temporarily growing as big as $7 septillion. The issue was quickly fixed as the website data appeared to be back to normal as of 8:20 am UTC.

CoinGecko co-founder and CEO Bobby Ong told Cointelegraph that the website’s errors were due to a major glitch, stating:

“We are facing an internal glitch over here affecting the market cap of some coins and are fixing this issue now. Things are stabilizing so hopefully no more cases like this happening again.”

According to CoinGecko’s major competitor website, CoinMarketCap, the REL token subsequently surged following the glitch, with the price surging to $0.9, or over 20% over the past 24 hours at the time of writing. The coin’s fully diluted market cap is now worth $24.7 million, ranked the 5,378th token by market cap, according to the website.

The REL token was launched by crypto developer Slava Balasanov in 2018. After hitting the all-time high above $8 in April 202, the REL token subsequently plummeted below $1 in a couple of months.

Some enthusiasts in the crypto community chuckled about CoinGecko’s latest glitch as it came shortly after CoinMarketCap’s owner Binance announced a $200 million investment in Forbes on Thursday.

In light of Binance's 200m investment in Forbes, this is how CoinGecko plans to stay relevant pic.twitter.com/u7BC8XOw22

— Darren Lau (Lau, Lau) (@Darrenlautf) February 11, 2022

Related: CoinMarketCap removes allegedly fake SHIB wormhole addresses

CoinGecko is not alone in facing glitches like this though. CoinMarketCap experienced a similar issue one year ago, with Wrapped Bitcoin suddenly gaining quadrillions of dollars in value, briefly and mistakenly becoming the website's most-valued cryptocurrency in January 2021.