BitMEX Whale Tanks Bitcoin Price to $8.9K During BTC Sale

Cryptocurrency derivatives site BitMEX has begun investigating “unusual activity” after users reported a momentary drop in the spot price of Bitcoin (BTC) on the platform.

At 1am UTC, users on X reported an anomaly in BitMEX's BTC/Tether spot market, which temporarily sent the price of Bitcoin down to $8,900.

According to reports, an unknown party sold more than 400 BTC in a short period of time. BitMEX confirmed a large sell order on the BTC/USDT spot market and began investigating the situation internally.

According to BitMEX, the derivatives markets and prices of XBT derivatives contracts are not affected by volatility.

According to crypto researcher Syq, an anonymous whale sells more than 400 BTC in batches of 10-50 BTC within two hours. The researcher revealed that BitMEX had disabled withdrawals from some accounts.

In response to the suspended accounts, BitMEX said:

“Just to clarify: we have not disabled withdrawals for all users, but only for a few accounts that are part of the investigation.”

BitMEX has confirmed that the trading platform is operating normally and all funds are safe. Speaking to Cointelegraph, BitMEX could not comment on “the behavior of the individual user, the actions taken or the actual order size, we are actively continuing our investigation”. It is standard procedure for such investigations, and will continue until further notice, the company added.

“As soon as we noticed unusual activity in our BTC-USDT spot market, we initiated an investigation. While all of our systems are operating normally, we have identified aggressive selling behavior involving a very small number of accounts that exceed the expected market limits. Our compliance department is actively investigating relevant individual accounts, and our users will be aware of any future “We will review the necessary steps,” a BitMEX spokesperson told Cointelegraph.

Related: Spot Bitcoin ETFs Could ‘Destroy Bitcoin': Arthur Hayes

Arthur Hayes, the former CEO of BitMEX, previously commented that if Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) become too successful, Bitcoin could “completely destroy”.

According to Hayes, Bitcoin ETF issuers holding all BTC would negatively impact the number of transactions on the Bitcoin network, and miners would lose any incentive to continue validating transactions.

“The end result is that miners destroy their machines because they can't pay for the labor needed to run them,” Hayes said. “Without miners, the network will die and Bitcoin will disappear.”

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