Computers bungle basic math to show erroneous data of bitcoin’s 90 per cent crash on Pyth
- A data contributor submitted its bitcoin price as a floating-point number instead of an integer, which was converted into zero and published
- The programme of another data contributor took the wrong route in a race condition, generating a zero when it should’ve been negative 8
The Pyth Network briefly reported in error on Monday that the digital currency had plunged to US$5,402, far below its level everywhere else.
In a subsequent autopsy of the incident, Pyth said two unidentified firms that supply data to the platform encountered trouble dealing with decimals, causing them to report extremely low bitcoin prices. Those incorrect numbers got averaged with bitcoin prices from nine other Pyth contributors, leading to the inaccurate result.
Digital currencies aren’t traded on Pyth. Instead, the service feeds data on the current prices of stocks, currencies (cryptocurrencies and conventional ones) and metals to software running on the Solana blockchain. Customers use Pyth to, for instance, automatically decide when to sell positions. Pyth said in its blog post that the plunge caused some liquidations.
It was an especially eye-catching error considering the credentials of Pyth’s backers – about two dozen traders and exchanges that count among the most sophisticated companies in global markets.