For a brief moment, their worlds had changed.
On Tuesday afternoon a Coinbase “display issue” changed the balances of an untold number of customers’ accounts — making many of them billionaires in the process. Billionaires on paper, that is, because as Coinbase hastily pointed out in a statement on Twitter, no real trading was affected by the glitch.
“We’re aware some customers are seeing inflated values for non-tradable crypto assets on Coinbase.com and Coinbase Wallet,” read the Coinbase statement acknowledging the error. “This is a display issue only and does not impact trading.”