The company acknowledged on Friday that Revolut’s app had been displaying wildly inaccurate cryptocurrency prices due to an outage with an external provider. Users shared numerous screenshots on social media showing Bitcoin priced at just 2 cents.
External Providers Cited for Pricing Issues
Revolut issued a statement confirming the problem, mentioning that their engineers are currently working on a resolution and advising customers to monitor their status page for updates.
“Hello. We would like to assist you with any issues regarding Bitcoin price notifications. We are facing a problem affecting some app functionalities. Rest assured, our team is addressing this issue as we speak. Please check our status page for further information.”
Later, a spokesperson confirmed the disruption was linked to a service outage with an unnamed external pricing provider. They also stated they are still investigating the specifics of the incident.
Update: This issue extended beyond Bitcoin. Multiple cryptocurrencies on Revolut appeared to be glitching simultaneously.
What seemed like a pricing error led many to believe they had stumbled upon the biggest crypto discount ever.
Notably, the problem wasn’t confined to Bitcoin alone. Users reported simultaneous drops in the prices of XRP, Solana, and even stablecoins like USDT and USDC. Screenshots from X and Reddit illustrated Bitcoin’s 24-hour chart plunging nearly 50% during the day, briefly hitting around $39,900 before a sharp recovery.
Some users even received push notifications claiming that Bitcoin had reached a 52-week low of 2 cents.
No Comparable Movements on Other Platforms
Price data from major aggregators showed no unusual activity during this time. Bitcoin prices on platforms like CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko remained steady, with no signs of a crash in the derivatives market, suggesting the anomaly was unique to Revolut.
Ranveer Arora, a former head of quantitative trading at PwC and co-founder of Altura.trade, offered two potential explanations for the issue.
The first possibility involves a corrupted data tick affecting Revolut’s pricing system—essentially a single erroneous data point temporarily distorting the chart. Revolut relies on external providers for its prices, making it vulnerable to such errors.
The second explanation could be a transient liquidity gap. Since Revolut’s order book is not as deep as that of a full exchange, a large sell order might have theoretically drained available bids, causing a sharp drop before the price recovered.
However, Arora leaned towards the data feed explanation, noting the absence of matching prints on other platforms.
Mark Tillement, director of blockchain price oracle Pais Data Association, indicated that this episode highlights how a single misleading data point can quickly skew price perceptions, particularly in retail-focused systems where users may not consider double-checking the information displayed.
He emphasized that as markets increasingly rely on data, the dependability of pricing infrastructure becomes crucial in maintaining traders’ trust in their observations.
Tillement argued that having a transparent and verifiable data layer can be the differentiator between a minor hiccup and a major crisis.
