Bitcoin Crashed To $8,000 On BitMEX Driven By Large Sell Orders From Whales

While bulls continue to scan the horizons for a new all-time high, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) tumbled to lows of $8,900 on the digital asset exchange BitMEX in the wee hours of Monday.

According to data from TradingView, the price dip began at 22:40 UTC from $67,000 before sliding to $8K in less than three minutes. However, TradingView’s data indicates an immediate upswing to $67,000 before 23:00 UTC, with traders on the exchange left scratching their heads over the anomaly.

While BitMEX endured the throes of a flash crash, prices on other exchanges continued to hover above the $60K mark, with the global average pushing toward $68,000.

As prices normalized on the platform, pundits sought to rationalize the crash, blaming massive selling activities by whales on the exchange. One X user alleged that a single whale dumped over 800 BTC on the XBT/USDT pair on the exchange, triggering the flash crash.

According to Syq, the incident may have caused losses in excess of $4 million, with the whale “eating 30%+ slippage.” In response to Syq’s claim, BitMEX clarified that its derivatives products were unaffected by the flash crash and confirmed that an investigation probing the causes of the crash is underway.

“We are investigating unusual activity in the past few hours involving a user selling large orders on our BTC-USDT Spot market,” said BitMEX in a statement. “This does not affect any of our derivative markets nor the index price for our popular XBT derivatives contracts.”

Despite claims that the exchange may have halted withdrawals, BitMEX clarified that the “trading platform is operating as normal and all funds are safe.”

Preliminary investigations from BitMEX appear to confirm Syq’s claims but allege that multiple accounts may have been involved in the selling spree.

“All of our systems were operating as normal, but we identified aggressive selling behaviour involving a very small number of accounts widely beyond expected market ranges,” said BitMEX.

Flash crashes are not an entirely new phenomenon in the ecosystem, with leading exchanges having their fair share of the black swan event.

Still holding steady

It appears that BitMEX’s flash crash may have had a series of unintended consequences for BTC as the largest cryptocurrency suffered a 6% slip to trade at $62,966.

The decline in price marks a two-week low for the asset after previously notching an all-time high of $74,000 last week. BTC’s decline dragged several assets underwater, with ether (ETH) tumbling to $3,283 on Tuesday morning as experts predict a price lull in the coming weeks.

In light of bitcoin’s recent all-time high and subsequent correction, we anticipate a period of market recalibration as investors seek equilibrium amidst unprecedented inflows into spot bitcoin ETF,” said Bitfinex’s analyst.