On Monday, mainstream communication and social media platforms such as Whatsapp, Facebook, and Instagram went offline in response to surging cryptocurrency prices. Data from Coin Telegraph Markets Pro shows that the price for Bitcoin jumped to $49,000 before falling back to a low $47,1666. The cryptocurrency rose 4.5% in only two hours. The same pattern occurred with Ethyreum. It rose by 3.5% in the two-hour gap and reached $3,411.
What’s behind the crypto price volatility?
At 3:16 pm on October 4, Whatsapp, Facebook, and Instagram crashed. Following suit, the price of cryptocurrencies shot up. Facebook’s communication team posted a message on Twitter stating they were attempting to remedy things as fast as possible.
The interruptions impacted community engagement on blockchain and crypto projects. Many crypto users took to Twitter with their complaints about the crash. They highlighted the necessity for creating a decentralized social platform created on blockchain. According to Allen Farrington, a cryptocurrency blogger, “If Facebook was built using blockchain, crashing would be out of the question”.
The outage happened after former Facebook staff member Frances Haugen handed over several documents that implied the company was not removing hate posts and speech from its platform. Directly afterward, Facebook’s stock plummeted over 5%, reaching $324.90.
How did Twitter respond?
The social media site is busy working on its own version of a decentralized platform. In fact, Twitter recently put a crypto developer as the group’s lead. According to Dorsey, the aim was to recommend algorithms that direct users’ attention towards content that sparks informative and meaningful conversations.
