Bitcoin Appears to Crash 87% in a Flash at Binance’s US Site

The price of bitcoin appeared to be down sharply – and only temporarily – on Binance’s US exchange on Thursday morning with a nearly 87% drop, from a low of around $65,000 to $8,200. The price did nothing like it elsewhere, and the level on Binance almost immediately returned to where it was.

According to the Binance website, the dip occurred at 7:34 am New York time. Volume on the exchange at that minute was 592.8 bitcoins, which is just shy of $40 million at current current prices.

Mistakes like this happen throughout finance, for example, traders falsify the details of the trades they want, enter the wrong price or order size. A mistakenly large trade, as an example, can overwhelm an exchange’s order book, leading to a quick and massive drop. The famous flash across the US stock market crashed back in May 2010, although equities have avoided most trouble since that era.

Binance did not immediately respond to a request for comment on what happened.

This is the latest in a string of recent high-profile trading problems in crypto. Synthetify, a new decentralized exchange, was forced to shut down sometime earlier this month due to poor data provided by the Pyth network, a price feed backed by some of the world’s most renowned trading and exchange firms. . Pyth falsified another time in September, causing it to mistakenly appear that bitcoin had crashed 90%.