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Bitcoin suffered a flash crash overnight, falling 22% in the span of an hour before returning to the record-high levels at which the alternative currency has lately been trading.
The cause was a software glitch. Bitcoin, which is operated as a collective with no central bank, recently upgraded its digital mint. Every 10 minutes, bitcoin “miners,” the people who create new units of the currency, compete to decrypt a puzzle that unlocks new bitcoins, which keeps the system running as it should. But it only works if everyone involved can agree the puzzle has been correctly solved.
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The cause was a software glitch. Bitcoin, which is operated as a collective with no central bank, recently upgraded its digital mint. Every 10 minutes, bitcoin “miners,” the people who create new units of the currency, compete to decrypt a puzzle that unlocks new bitcoins, which keeps the system running as it should. But it only works if everyone involved can agree the puzzle has been correctly solved.
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