When Facebook Group Dies, Bitcoin And Other Crypto Prices Skyrocket

JAKARTA - The main social media and communication platforms Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp went out or offline on Monday, October 4 while the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies jumped.

As data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro shows, Bitcoin (BTC) price moved above $49,000 after falling to a daily low of $47,166. This figure, increased by about 4.5% in less than two hours. Similarly, the price of Ether (ETH) rose 3.5% over the same period to reach USD 3,411 at the time of publication.

The sudden price volatility occurred when the main social media platform Facebook, the photo and video sharing app Instagram, and the messenger app WhatsApp, both owned by Facebook. The platform outage occurred around 15:16 UTC or 23:15 WIB on October 4. According to Facebook's communications team, communicated via Twitter, the company is "working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible."

At roughly the same time on March 13, 2019, all three platforms also reported major outages lasting more than 24 hours. At the time, Facebook attributed the problem to a "server configuration change."

These interruptions may affect community engagement around crypto and blockchain projects, but Discord, Twitter, YouTube, and many other platforms are still functioning normally. Many Crypto Twitter users are already using the incident to highlight the need for a decentralized social network built on blockchain.

“If they built Facebook on the blockchain, it would never go down,” said Allen Farrington, who regularly writes about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies on his Medium blog.

The blackout also came after former Facebook employee Frances Haugen turned over thousands of documents to journalists and others implying that the company did not do what it claims related to removing hate speech content from the platform and posts that encourage violence. Facebook shares fell more than 5% on Monday to reach $324.90 at the time of publication.

Twitter is already working on its own decentralized social media initiative. CEO Jack Dorsey first announced in December 2019 that the platform would fund a dedicated team to develop decentralized standards for social media, and recently hired a crypto developer to lead the group.

At the time, Dorsey said the goal was to move away from content hosting and removal to recommendation algorithms that direct users' attention and to steer clear of content that sparks controversy and outrage rather than healthy, informative conversation.