Bitcoin Price on BitMEX Dips to $8,900 Amid Large Sell-Off

The cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX experienced a sharp drop in the spot price of Bitcoin against USDT, falling below $8,900.

Someone just dumped 400+ BTC over 2 hours in 10-50 BTC clips on the XBTUSDT pair on Bitmex eating 30%+ slippage. They must’ve lost $4m+ at least. pic.twitter.com/g64NRQ4h5a

— syq (@syq) March 18, 2024

“Someone just sold over 400 BTC in two hours in batches of 10-50 BTC on the XBT/USDT pair on BitMEX with over 30% slippage. [Traders] must have lost at least $4 million,” wrote the crypto researcher known as syq.

BitMEX representatives responded to the “unusual activity” related to the sale of large orders. According to them, the exchange has already begun investigating the incident. 

We are investigating unusual activity in the past few hours involving a user selling large orders on our BTC-USDT Spot Market.

This does not affect any of our derivative markets, nor the index price for our popular XBT derivatives contracts.

The trading platform is operating…

— BitMEX (@BitMEX) March 19, 2024

“This does not affect any of our derivative markets, nor the index price for our popular XBT derivatives contracts. The trading platform is operating normally, and all funds are safe,” the statement said. 

BitMEX also disabled withdrawals for several accounts related to the incident.

Later, the company reported that it is investigating “potential misconduct” by traders on the BTC/USDT spot market.

“Bitcoin down to $8,900 on BitMEX?” Well, not quite the whole picture.

Yes, we are investigating potential misconduct by traders on our Bitcoin-USDT Spot market (?Did you even know we offer Spot trading?)

However, this incident had NO impact on our billion-dollar derivatives… pic.twitter.com/qWXXnyQxjw

— BitMEX (@BitMEX) March 19, 2024

“We create fair and equal markets for all, without employing internal market makers. The Bitcoin sell orders this morning were too large and frequent for MM and other traders to react to. As usual, our compliance team is reviewing the accounts and transactions that caused such price movement,” BitMEX explained.

Deposits and withdrawal requests on the trading platform continue to be processed as usual, added the exchange representatives.

Back in late February, Coinbase faced an issue with “zero balances.” The company’s head, Brian Armstrong, attributed it to an “enormous” influx of users.

In early March, the exchange experienced similar difficulties with delays and account resets.