Revolut users briefly saw bitcoin prices plunge to cents — likely a display or liquidity glitch
Some Revolut customers were startled on Friday when the app’s bitcoin chart suddenly showed massive, short-lived price drops — in one case around £29,414 on the one‑day chart before snapping back to roughly £58,600. Social posts pushed the story further, with some users claiming the app showed BTC prints as low as $0.02. CoinDesk could not independently verify those extreme levels or confirm whether any trades executed at those prices.
No broader market break
The anomaly appeared isolated to Revolut. Major price aggregators such as CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap, and exchanges tracked by them, showed no corresponding distortion — bitcoin was trading just above $79,000 in Asian afternoon hours on Friday. Revolut had not responded to requests for comment by publication time.
Unclear whether trades filled
A few users on X said buy orders went through during the disruption, but those reports remain unconfirmed. If trades were executed at the aberrant prices, Revolut would need to probe whether the prints reflected genuine liquidity, stale quotes, order routing errors or an internal pricing bug — and then decide how to reconcile any customer positions or settlements.
How these flash dislocations happen
Flash moves in crypto apps can stem from several technical or liquidity issues:
- Display glitches can show incorrect prices without any market execution.
- Thin liquidity on a particular venue or internal pricing rail can create sharp “wicks” if an order sweeps a shallow order book.
- Market makers can briefly withdraw quotes, widening spreads; apps that aggregate multiple feeds may momentarily display prices that don’t match deeper global markets.
“Revolut operates with limited liquidity depth compared to a full exchange, and if a large enough sell order hit a thin book at the wrong moment, it could exhaust all available bids down to that level before the price recovered,” Ranveer Arora, co‑founder and CEO of Altura, told CoinDesk, suggesting a liquidity sweep as one plausible cause.
Not the first time
Crypto platforms have seen similar isolated dislocations before. In December, bitcoin printed far below market on Binance’s USD1 pair due to thin trading on that pair rather than broad selling pressure. South Korean exchanges also recorded sharp local wicks during the 2024 martial‑law shock, when surging activity briefly pushed local books away from global prices.
What this means for users
For retail traders, these episodes are a reminder that brokerage-style apps and wrapped liquidity rails can behave differently from deep, on‑exchange order books. If you saw an unexpected fill or pricing anomaly, check your trade confirmations and contact customer support; if a platform executed erroneous trades, it will likely investigate and determine whether to honor or cancel them based on its policies and the nature of the error.
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