Elon Musk says the major outage that disrupted his social media platform X for hours on Monday was due to a “massive cyberattack.” Adding another layer to the story, this outage occurred alongside a significant dip in Bitcoin, which saw the world’s leading cryptocurrency fall to under $80,000.

Data from Downdetector reveals the scale of the problem, with nearly 40,000 users reporting that X was offline around 2pm UTC. After an initial wave, these reports decreased, only to surge again an hour later, climbing above 17,000.

Shedding light on the cyberattack, Musk commented, “We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved.”

Adding another layer to the unfolding situation, the hacking group Dark Storm has reportedly claimed responsibility for the attack. This group has previously warned that they would target countries that support Israel.

Read more: UK Treasury says ‘no plans’ to introduce US-style bitcoin reserve

Meanwhile, as X grappled with the reported cyberattack, data from CoinGecko shows that the price of Bitcoin (BTC) was also under pressure. It dipped to $78,313, marking a 27.9% decrease from its all-time high in January.

Furthermore, Bitcoin’s value is also down 13.5% since last Thursday, following Donald Trump’s announcement about the creation of a US strategic BTC reserve. 

Looking back, Variety reports that X’s previous major outage was on August 9, 2024. On that occasion, at 12:16 am UTC, Bitcoin had climbed above $62,000 before dropping to around $60,000 throughout the day.

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