Jupiter’s Perpetual Crypto Trading Falters as Bitcoin Hits Record

UPDATE (March 5, 21 UTC): Reworks story with updated information from the company and comments from Jupiter's founder.

Bitcoin's (BTC) wild price swings spawned widespread chaos in the crypto markets Tuesday, including at Jupiter, an on-chain derivatives trading platform where users reported failed trades and liquidated positions.

Jupiter's founder said he plans to "look into making users whole" after issues were reported.

In a message on Telegram, pseudonymous founder Meow said Jupiter's perpetual futures exchange had resumed full operations Tuesday afternoon New York time. In the preceding hours it experienced "serious issues" stemming from a surge in demand, per a tweet.

The issues stemmed from bitcoin's record-setting climb above $69,000 and ensuing sell-off by traders cashing out at the new all-time high. Other cryptos, including SOL, followed the market leader up and down in a short period. All that volatility attracted plenty of traders to Jupiter's perpetual futures service, which saw 100 times more activity than usual, according to Meow.

On Jupiter’s Discord server traders claimed they were losing SOL to trades that were not executing. It was not immediately clear how much money was lost; Meow said the Jupiter team will post an update on the Discord server.

Earlier Tuesday Jupiter told users the issues related to "congestion" in its oracles, the piece trading infrastructure that pumps price data into Jupiter's on-chain smart contracts, which handle the trades.