Facebook crash strengthens Bitcoin’s market position

Facebook has been out of service for several hours, allowing Bitcoin to briefly exceed the company’s market cap today.

The cause of the failure is not clear

The incident affected not only the main Facebook site, but also its secondary apps, WhatsApp and Instagram.

Facebook said it was “aware that some people are having difficulty accessing our apps and products” and “is working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible.”

The failure appears to have an internal cause. Facebook’s domain name has apparently been deleted from global IP routing tables, something that could only be done from Facebook itself. In the meantime, employees have reportedly been locked outside of Facebook’s main building, suggesting that the company keep its systems under tight control.

The outage does not appear to be the result of external actors, as in the case of a DDOS attack, or outages of external services such as CDN / DNS outages.

While commentators have speculated on the possibility of internal sabotage or a system reconfiguration gone awry, the exact nature of the problem is still unclear.

Bitcoin briefly exceeds Facebook’s rating

Today’s blackout has led Bitcoin to overtake Facebook in terms of market capitalization today. While Facebook fell to a valuation of $ 923 billion at one point, BTC’s market cap briefly hit $ 929 billion.

This left Bitcoin as the sixth largest asset on AssetDash, after Apple, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, Alphabet A (Google) and Amazon.

Bitcoin has previously exceeded Facebook’s market cap at least twice this year. These events were highlighted by Gemini’s Cameron Winklevoss in January and that of Binance Changpeng Zhao in April.

The rapid movement of prices means that these assets have traded positions several times during the day. As such, this position is unlikely to last long.

Disclaimer: At the time of writing, this author held less than $ 75 worth of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and altcoins.