TL; DR
Full story
Uhhhhhh – how on earth did this happen??
Out of nowhere, the price of Bitcoin fell to $8.9k on BitMEX.
Here’s the how and why of it all:
At any given time, a number of crypto exchanges are within a few cents of the same BTC price, say $60,000.
The thing is: exchanges are never exactly the same because the price is an average estimate of future prices based on past, but recent, trades on each exchange.
In short, the stock markets are playing a game “Let’s guess the current price by looking at the very recent past.”
Good! BitMEX had some wild trades yesterday.
Someone sold 400 BTC in a two-hour period on the platform, disrupting BitMEX’s ability to accurately “guess the current price by looking at the very recent past”, and as a result, the BTC price plummeted fair for a short time.
Fortunately for the broader crypto space, it was exclusive to BitMEX and the market only reacted slightly before everything recovered.
Cool, well, now you know!