Bitcoin Flash Crashes to $0.02 on Revolut in Pricing Glitch

Bitcoin (BTC) prices dropped to as low as $0.02 on the Revolut financial app on Friday. The platform's one-day chart showed a sudden drop to about £29,414 before snapping back up near £58,600. In the meantime, the real Bitcoin market continued trading just over $79,000–$80,000 on all major exchanges. On Revolut, Ethereum fell below $2,200, Solana fell to about $85, and XRP fell to $1.25; however, Coinbase, Binance, and other platforms did not show any price changes that were similar.

There was no market fear. It was revealed by Revolut that incorrect pricing was caused by a service interruption at a third-party provider. The problem has been "rectified." But the event brings up questions that are important for anyone who holds crypto on fintech sites, especially those with leveraged positions.

What Caused the Glitch

A spokesperson for Revolut told CoinDesk directly, "Earlier today, pricing on our platform was wrong because of a service disruption at a third-party provider." We can confirm that this problem has been fixed and that prices now represent how the market is doing.

How fintech platforms get their prices is the technical reason why such high prices show up even though global exchange rates don't change at the same time. Revolut doesn't have as much liquidity as full exchanges with deep order books. Instead, it gets its prices from feeds from market makers and third-party sources that are combined. Prices that have nothing to do with the global market can be set when these feeds stop working because of old quotes, routeing mistakes, or the removal of market maker quotes.

It makes sense, according to Ranveer Arora, co-founder and CEO of Altura: "If a large enough sell order hit a thin book at the wrong time, it could exhaust all available bids down to that level before the price recovered." In environments with a small number of bids, one large order can quickly wipe out all available bids. This can cause a price wick that looks terrible on a chart but doesn't actually show any market execution at a meaningful scale.

Crypto markets have had individual problems in the past that were very similar to this one. In December, Bitcoin briefly printed much below market on Binance's USD1 pair. This was caused by a pair that wasn't being traded very much. When South Korea went into martial law in 2024, local order books broke away from global prices, which caused strong local wicks on the stock market. There was only one place where the dislocation happened, and it had its own unique liquidity features.

Whether Any Trades Executed — and Why It Matters

CoinDesk couldn't directly confirm that the prices were close to zero or that any trades were made at those levels. Some X users said that buy orders were filled during the outage, but those claims have not been proven yet. If trades were made at prices that didn't seem right, Revolut has to figure out whether the prints were due to real liquidity, old quotes, a routeing problem, or a platform-side mistake. The answer will have real financial effects on the users who were affected.

If you have a long position, an extreme downward wick can cause automatic liquidations at prices that don't reflect the real market conditions, even on a platform with low liquidity. If you want to get back a job that was closed, you have to go through the platform's dispute process. For short positions, platforms may cancel deals that were made at clearly odd prices, denying the short-seller the profit they thought they had made.

Risk Management Lessons for Crypto Holders

The Revolut event shows that it's not just the assets you hold that matter where and how you hold them. Several useful risk management rules can be used right away:

Platform diversification means storing your assets on more than one legal exchange and hardware wallet. This makes you less vulnerable to the technical failure of a single platform. In the event of a glitch at Revolut that wipes out a leveraged position, assets saved on Coinbase or in cold storage will not be affected.

Real-time documentation: If an unusual price event changes your position, take screenshots or videos of the unusual price, order status, and asset balance right away, along with any official platform messages about the disruption. This proof is what any compensation claim or regulatory complaint is based on.

Regulatory recourse—Revolut has financial licenses to work in several places, each with its own regulators. If a platform won't fix obvious technical errors that cost users money, they can file a complaint with the appropriate financial regulator. This only works if the platform is legal and controlled in the user's country.

The bug with Revolut Bitcoin is not about Bitcoin itself; it's about how the site works. Bitcoin itself continued to trade normally during the event. The nearly zero price was only shown on Revolut's interface and came from a messed-up third-party feed.

The market as a whole never changed. People who held crypto on mainstream exchanges or in their own hands could not see the event. As a warning to people who have leveraged positions on fintech platforms with thin liquidity rails, platform-specific technical risk is a real part of crypto portfolio risk. Spreading your crypto across different platforms and custody methods can help lower this risk in a meaningful way.