Another trading bot has gone wild, causing unusual trading activities on the crypto exchange Bitstamp.
While the crypto markets are recording short gains and losses across different exchanges in the last few hours, trading bot made some unusual loop manipulation on major cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and Litecoin within 30 minutes.
The bot started with BTC at about 1:12 AM UK time, selling around €6 million worth of BTC in less than 15 minutes, which dropped the price of the cryptocurrency to less than $5700 on Bitstamp, while prices at other exchanges were pegged around $6500 to $6700.
A few minutes later, €6 million worth was bought, pushing BTC price to nearly $8000 which is about 14% above other market price.
The bot did not end there as it continued its trades, selling about €1.3 million within a minute. This last buy stabilized the price, and BTC continued trading normal rate of around €5,685/$6,500.
Ethereum was the next on the bot’s list, and it spent about 25 minutes playing with the coin. The bot sent the price world’s largest altcoin to €235/$270, after buying a huge amount of ETH, while prices on other exchanges were around $220 to $230.
ETH trades continued, and the price was down to €125 ($144) after selling off some amounts of the coin. The bot continued trading until the price was as high as €250 ($288), and then back to its market price level.
Ripple XRP and LTC were also victims of the malfunctioning bot. While XRP followed the similar, though a bit different, trading patterns of BTC and ETH, recording high gains, LTC was not in the good books of the bot.
The bot refused to buy LTC, sending the price of to as low as €1 ($1.15) before finally pushing back to the normal market price of around €49 ($56) after about 5 minutes.
While Information about the wild bot remains unknown at this time, the Co-founder of Bitstamp had confirmed in a tweet that the wild bot belongs to a client, and it’s obvious that something had gone wrong.
The increase in prices at Bitstamp doesn’t seem to have affected the prices of the cryptos on other exchanges at this time.
