Cryptocurrencies
Bitcoin Plunge Has Newbies Scrambling to Google Double-Spend
- Bitcoin, the largest crypto, falls as much as 11% on Thursday
- ‘This doesn’t look sinister to me,’ says Coin Metrics’s Carter
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Bitcoin plunged more than 10% Thursday, sparking a hunt for reasons the notoriously volatile asset was selling off. One that captured attention questioned the very viability of the token itself -- though it turned out not to be cause for concern.
A report in a trade blog suggested that there had been what’s known as a double-spend, where the same token is used by the same person in two transactions. It’s like if someone bought a car, paid the seller, drove off with their brand new wheels and then later yanked back all the money. In the case of the blockchain -- or the software that underlies Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies -- the transaction in question would be excluded from the final tally on the digital ledger.