After the shock slippage of Bitcoin price on Friday, as well as the observations posted on social media regarding large sell orders on Bitstamp, one of the world’s oldest Bitcoin exchange has launched an internal investigation on the large Bitcoin sell order.
As CoinTelegraph reported, the company announced the investigation on its Twitter account, seemingly to unearth the reasons behind the large sell order that significantly impacted its order book, causing a flash crash from around USD 7,800 to USD 6,250 in under half an hour — a loss of about 20%. Forklog also confirmed that about 5,000 bitcoins had been involved in the sell order, each sold at USD 6,200.
2/2: We closely examine every event that causes large-scale movement in our order book and have started an immediate case investigation.
— Bitstamp (@Bitstamp) May 17, 2019
The order is thought to have also triggered a sell-off of roughly USD 250 million on BitMEX, which was almost immediately liquidated during that 30 minutes, causing more immediate panic and triggering further selloffs. However, prices than stabilized at around USD 7,300 where it continues to trade today. Bitstamp insists that its platform had not malfunctioned and was operating as it should be at the time.
Some commentators within the crypto space suggested to Bitstamp an alternative scenario, believing that this could have been a mistake, as the selling price could have been USD 8,200 (which was the price at the time) instead of USD 6,200.
This means some idiot placed a sell order wayyyy below market price – they could have sold for at least 2 k more per coin meaning 10 million in lost equity for no reason. I'm guessing they meant to enter "8200" but entered "6200"
— Dark Smoke (@DarkSmok3) May 17, 2019
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