Coinbase awarded a hacker $250,000 for discovering an exploit that may have saved billions.

Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, has paid a white-hat hacker $250,000 for discovering a critical weakness on the Advanced trading platform.

On February 11, an unknown hacker known only as "Tree of Alpha" declared on Twitter that he had identified a critical vulnerability that might have serious consequences for the exchange and potentially the entire crypto market.

He discovered through his research that he could sell "0.0243 ETH" for "0.0243 BTC" by using the BTC-USD pair, which he didn't have access to, and without owning any BTC.

Users could place an order to sell 50 SHIB (worth $0.001) for 50 BTC, which was executed through Coinbase's order books, indicating that the problem was more serious.

Fortunately, as soon as he discovered the problems, he contacted the Coinbase Dev team and requested that all Advanced Trading and, most crucially, order posting be immediately stopped.

After getting the info, Coinbase announced that the deficit had been closed without causing any damage to consumers' assets.

The Tree of Alpha white-hat hacker did not maliciously exploit the flaw; rather, he discovered it and requested that Coinbase patch it right away. As a result, the Coinbase exchange paid a $250,000 bug bounty for his discovery.

He was given a $250,000 bounty as a prize for his investigation, and even though many people believe he was not adequately compensated, he does not appear to be offended. The White hat hacker also doesn't appear to be in it for the money.

He specifically thanked the community for assisting him in reaching out faster, as well as coinbase for its quick response to solve the error, few hours in his tweets.

Thanks to The Tree of Alpha, who saved all coinbase users and the entire crypto community from losing billions of dollars to criminals who could have maliciously exploited the bugs.