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In a flash crash event, bitcoin plummeted in price on Kraken today. Crypto’s largest asset quickly rallied, however, providing one massive lower candle wick for price action.
Bitcoin dove more than $1,000 on Kraken’s crypto exchange on April 25, as seen in the chart below. The price provided a catastrophic wick, from around $5,400, down to $4,357, and subsequently rallied right back up to a normal trading range. The whole whiplash event occurred within five minutes or so, involving a trading volume of more than 1,500 Bitcoin in that period, as can be seen on the following 30-minute candle chart.
The severe drop in price may have triggered traders’ stop-loss zones, causing trade closures and losses. Some traders, however, may have caught lucky breaks, snagging a few low price bids. Twitter user Crypt0mer claimed to have hit a couple of excellent BTC trade entries from the event.
Long History of Flash Crash Events
On April 17, a similar event occurred on Binance for Waves cryptocurrency. The asset dropped a staggering 99.9% within a single hourly candle, according to CryptoPotato’s coverage on the news.
Additionally, Kraken itself saw another similar event back on September 4 of 2018, with Ethereum falling more than $40 in an instant. The exchange saw 18,000 ETH sold and bought within one minute.
December 6, 2018, also saw an Ethereum flash crash on Coinbase Pro when the asset dropped from around $100, down to $13.05, and then back upward again, as reported by CryptoPotato.
Such flash crash events can have many causes, ranging from bot trading to big players hitting large market orders. However, there is always a positive side: Think of the ones who had low orders on Kraken’s order book who made a quick 22% on their filled positions. As mentioned in our crypto trading tips, sometimes it’s wise to leave low orders.
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