The bitcoin price took a major leap on Wednesday morning, spiking nearly $300 in less than a minute to break out of what had been two days of mostly sideways trading for the flagship cryptocurrency.
The incident in question occurred at exactly 1:00 UTC, when BTC leaped from $6,466 to $6,745 during a single one-minute candle on Bitfinex, and the bitcoin price continued to increase from there, rising above the $6,800 mark and peaking at $6,899 before settling back down to a present value of $6,840 at 1:34 UTC.
Early indications suggest that the price action, which came during a period of relatively-low trading volume in the cryptocurrency markets, may not be quite organic. That’s because it occurred at nearly the exact moment that BitMEX, a leveraged cryptocurrency trading platform that handles billions of dollars worth of contracts daily, went offline for scheduled maintenance.
the moment @BitMEXdotcom went offline pic.twitter.com/OxppDispgb
— CamelBusBananaWomp (@CamelBus_) August 22, 2018
As of the time of writing, BitMEX was beginning to resume services, though it had not yet re-enabled trading. Consequently, it remains to be seen whether the market will sustain these gains throughout the early morning hours.
Click here for a real-time bitcoin price chart.
Featured Image from Shutterstock
Follow us on Telegram or subscribe to our newsletter here.
• Join CCN’s crypto community for $9.99 per month, click here.
• Want exclusive analysis and crypto insights from Hacked.com? Click here.
• Open Positions at CCN: Full Time and Part Time Journalists Wanted.