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The price of bitcoin just suffered a flash crash, falling from $65,500 to as low as $8,200 on crypto exchange Binance.US. That’s an 88% drop that happened in a matter of seconds.
On other exchanges, the price fell but not by anywhere near as much. Generally, it dropped to around $64,200, with the price of ether also falling from $4,300 to $4,100.
The price of bitcoin briefly fell to $8,200. Source: Binance.US.
This could have been caused by what’s known as a fat finger error (where a trader accidentally enters the wrong price) or by a large market order instead of selling their position in blocks of trades. Alternatively it’s possible it could have been a deliberate trade to manipulate the market.
Following the crash, the price of bitcoin briefly recovered to around $65,000 before reversing back to $64,500 at press time. The price of ether has struggled to recover too and is trading around $4,170.
We have reached out to Binance.US and will update this story if we hear back.
For more breaking stories like this, make sure to follow The Block on Twitter. H/T to @str8edgeracer for pointing this story out.
