Don't be Greedy wrote:
Good thing to sell before the latest Flash Crash. Otherwise you would have lost -10%.
Bitcoin $7,363.17 -9.11%
Ethereum $245.22 -6.38%
Ripple XRP $0.388002 -14.37%
Actually, you could have lost closer to -25%. It was down to 6400 USD or so on the spot arbs.
Shortly before 11pm EDT on Thursday night, we reported that cryptos suddenly jerked lower with Bitcoin flash-crashing over 15%, sliding as low as $6,395 on Bitmex XBTUSD perpetual swap - the most liquid bitcoin contract globally - before bouncing back.
5,000 bitcoin went through on European physical exchange Bitstamp between 3.45 a.m and 4.15 a.m (London time, UTC +1) crashing the price down to $6,178 on the exchange.
This $35m movement is not that big, except that Bitstamp is the main ingredient in derivative indices, which then led to auto-sell orders.
As a result, more than $200mln of sell liquidations occurred which took the market down with it
As the crash accelerated, overleveraged positions got cleared, resulting in open interest down by a third from $630mln to $400mln
The Basis (Bitmex XBTUSD - Coinbase BTCUSD) instantly plunged to - 5% - very unusual to see the bitmex perp decoupling to such an extent.
Liquidity - measured by bid offer spread of $10mln in the XBTUSD order book - evaporated for a moment.
" It's also another serious session for bitcoin with more than $12bln going through on the futures side in last 24h."
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-17/what-caused-last-nights-bitcoin-flash-crash