A flash crash brought the bitcoin price down by up to 18 percent in just two hours.
Between 2030 and 2200 on Wednesday, the BTC/USD exchange rate plunged from $13,850 to $11,350, according to data assembled by CoinStats’ cryptocurrency portfolio management app. Earlier that day, the pair had posted a remarkable parabolic jump of more than 19 percent, establishing a record yearly high just shy of $13,000. The plunge negated almost all those intraday gains.
Soon after the crash, San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, went offline citing major outage on its website, app, and API. The exchange later resumed services, coinciding with a 12.47 percent recovery in the bitcoin market.
Bitcoin FOMO Sentiment Intact
The bitcoin market is trending upward for almost three months now without breaking a sweat. Analysts had earlier predicted a significant downside correction in a range of 30-40 percent as a sign of neutralizing sentiment.
Nevertheless, the pump-and-dump action noted on Wednesday looked aggressively fishy, as if a big whale intentionally entered large bitcoin buying orders, pushed the asset higher, and dumped it all on the first sign of a pullback.
According to investor-analyst Alex Kruger, bitcoin’s downside correction was natural. He said that such bearish moves are a feature, not a bug.
“Every single move since BTC broke $4200 has seen a large retracement, with the sole exception of the Apr/2 move. Retracements are useful for trading or for jumping onto the train for those who missed it. Eventually, there will come a retracement that fails. That’s life.”
he said.
The BTC price hasn’t let the $20,000 top target go off despite the interim crash sentiment.
