Since Bitcoin (BTC) witnessed a crash to $64,000 this week, the crypto asset has failed to regain its momentum, causing its price to drop even lower. This has led to an overall market decline that has impacted altcoins.
Bitcoin plummets to $8,900 on BitMEX Exchange
In a devastating turn of events, Bitcoin witnessed a steep decline on Seycelles-based cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX on Monday. Reports from blockchain media, Wu Blockchain revealed that Bitcoin fell to around $8,900, following a massive sell-off of BTC on the platform.
Wu Blockchain reported that a user sold over 400 BTC, which led to the price of Bitcoin falling to the aforementioned figure. In the span of two hours, the unknown user sold the 400 BTC in groups of 10-50 BTC.
Consequently, the market stability of BitMEX was affected as the user sold the assets at incredibly low prices. However, according to reports from Blockchain Daily, the event was short-lived as prices have now returned to normal levels.
In response to the development BitMEX has assured the crypto community that it is “investigating strange behavior” involving users selling substantial orders on the spot market for BTC-USDT.
The crypto platform further stated that while the investigation is ongoing, “the derivatives market will still be operational, including the index price for its popular XBT derivatives contracts.” Furthermore, the exchange confirmed the safety of users’ funds and assets, and the platform is “running as usual.”
Considering that Bitcoin’s price was at $68,000 before the incident, the decline indicates a drop of more than 87%. After falling to $8,900, Bitcoin recovered, but the abnormal price fluctuations lasted another 30 minutes before the situation returned completely to normal.
The development has since caused quite a stir within the cryptocurrency landscape, leaving the community to wonder about the reason behind the decline. Several crypto enthusiasts believe that the incident was a move orchestrated by BitMEX to manipulate prices to liquidate investors and ultimately make a lot of money.
A bigger crash could happen
As Bitcoin continues to fall, so does gold advocate and crypto critic Peter Schiff predicted a bigger crash in prices. Initially, Peter Schiff drew the crypto community’s attention to the 2021 rally, which saw BTC peak at $69,000.
However, the largest cryptocurrency witnessed a collapse the following year and by November 2022 it was already trading at $16,000. As a result, Schiff mocked Bitcoin enthusiasts and asked, “How many of them still have their laser eyes on their profiles.”
Given that the majority are currently more bullish on BTC, Schiff expects that a “bigger crash” is likely on the horizon.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s price was trading at $62,943, indicating a decline of more than 7% in the past 24 hours. The market capitalization has fallen by more than 7%, while trading volume has steadily increased by 63% over the past day.
Featured image from iStock, chart from Tradingview.com
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