Bitcoin stalls as crypto market takes another battering


avatar Quebex Fintech Inc.
Jun 30, 2017

The cryptocurrency market is down again after another lacklustre week; ethereum never really recovered after the crash and bitcoin is looking rather bearish despite making some progress since last weekend’s correction.

Bitcoin is currently trading at $3,320.40 CAD a coin as of 11.30am, ET, Friday, according to data from CoinDesk – down roughly $16 CAD in 24 hours.

Ethereum was enjoying fantastic gains this year, up until about a week and a half ago when a flash crash reduced the value of one ether to about ten cents in an amusing (not for investors, of course) turn of events.

According to Adam White, VP of Coinbase-owned GDAX, one bigtime investor placed a multi-million dollar ethereum sell order at 12.30 pm on Wednesday, June 22.



Ethereum’s price dipped just enough to prompt the sell order and the sheer size of the order caused the price of the currency, which was already volatile, to slide.

That’s when things got really crazy; the sudden drop in price triggered a series of other stop loss orders which, in turn, caused the value of ethereum to freefall almost instantaneously.

"This slippage started a cascade of approximately 800 stop loss orders and margin funding liquidations, causing ETH to temporarily trade as low as $0.10 USD," said White.

The coin recovered a few hours later – though confidence has likely been permanently shaken – but there was bad news for investors who unknowingly sold ether for peanuts thanks to this algorithmic frenzy; GDAX, in a cruel move, said it won’t rewind the trades.






Meanwhile those who had wishful buy orders set up are laughing, having made a killing off the misery of others; one thing’s for sure, there’s never a dull moment in crypto-land.

Ethereum is at $384.19 CAD a coin as of 12pm, ET, Friday – down 2.5% against the US dollar, according to data from CoinDesk.

Total market cap is at approximately $130 billion CAD – up about $6 billion CAD since Monday, though yet to recover to pre-crash heights; bitcoin’s market dominance is back up to 41%.