What. The. Hell. In the past few minutes, Bitcoin (BTC) has slipped, showing an uncharacteristic bout of weakness in a massive uptrend. In fact, within the span of a few minutes, seconds maybe, Bitcoin fell from $13,800 — a year-to-date high — to just under $12,000.
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Now, as of the time of writing this, Bitcoin sits at $12,600, rallying by almost 8% in another few minutes off its short-term bottom. The market sure is volatile, and it seems that there’s a reason for that.
Bitcoin Markets Seeing Overwhelming Demand
During this move, exchanges the board began to stutter, falling under the pressure of an influx in demand. As NewsBTC’s Cole Petersen spotted, Coinbase’s entire platform, both on mobile and desktop, temporarily stopped working.
This writer has corroborated those claims, as he was temporarily greeted with an error message on Coinbase.com before service resumed minutes later.
.@coinbase appears to be having problems right now, at least on their mobile app.
Problems started right when $BTC dumped to below $12k
— Cole Petersen (@ColePetersen14) June 26, 2019
According to other reports made by users, other platforms have also seen some difficulty operating during this massive flash crash. One investor even drew attention to Binance, which to him/her stopped working for a short period of time. This writer has anecdotally confirmed that the crypto exchange is operating slower than normal.
Some have managed to take the brunt of this collapse, however. BitMEX, for instance, is now registering record volumes, seeing over $13 billion worth of volume on its Bitcoin contract in the past 24 hours.
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Considering that BTC is still quite the trek away from all-time highs, the volume only accentuates the significance of this swing higher. The volume, in the eyes of some, also shows that the fear of missing out (FOMO) has begun to materialize in these markets yet again.
For the first time in 2019, the “Real 10” volume of bitcoin, which refers to the daily volume from 10 exchanges acknowledged to have real volume by Bitwise, is nearing $5 billion. BitMEX volume also surpassed $11 billion.
— Joseph Young (@iamjosephyoung) June 26, 2019
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