The idea that it was a deliberate movement by someone/entity that knew how the system would react and could be manipulated also intrigued me. Any idea how trade priorities are established among the exchanges?
Is there any possibility at all with crypto coins, that these trades could be reversed? I'd also be curious to know if GDAX or any of the others were fully online and functional during the incident or if the entire market was overwhelmed.
There will be no reversal, GDAX have already stated this (and there shouldn't be one).
This is just a simple case of slippage; the order was of such a size that it consumed the entire bid book. If it were a regulated (Dodd-Frank) exchange, a circuit-breaker might have triggered and the trade itself might be investigated, but cryptocoins are not securities and aren't treated like this. (And that's the way we like it...)
People who had stop limits and those who were long on margin suffered losses on this, but the answer for them is to be more careful in their trading patterns.
EDIT: This post on reddit indicates that the initial sell wasn't so large as to consume the entire bid book (it dropped the price by 29%); it was the cascade of stop limits and margin liquidations that drove the price so low. It's actually quite beautiful in its own way...
a great example of why 'stop orders' are such a bad idea. especially in an illiquid market.
Or why trading on margin can get you in trouble.
I saw reports of people with hundreds of coins as collateral(!) supporting a small position on margin and then they lost the whole lot.
GDAX have reversed the 'no-reversal' and will now refund customers who "experienced a margin call or stop loss order executed on the GDAX ETH-USD order book as a direct result of the rapid price movement at 12.30pm PT on June 21, 2017". Customers who benefited from buy orders get to keep their booty.
I think it's wrong to do that, but GDAX presumably made the calculation and considered that what they saved on lawyers and bad publicity made it worth it.
What they're going to do in future cases of large sells in thin order books is left unstated...
I believe this is a hilariously bad decision on their part. It sets a very bad precedent and no matter what they do in the future (circuit breakers, etc...), it will be much harder to justify not footing the bill of future incidents. GDAX effectively paid for the stupidity (and greed) of the market participants. The stupid will thus not learn and the greedy will be further encouraged.
This decision is actively punishing the principled and knowledgeable investor, if by nothing else than by the fact that a market where stupidity and greed go unchecked is prone to much more instability.
Where are you all trading ETH on? I am trying to get verified for Kraken/GDAX/Coinbase but nothing works
Bity seems to have quite a bit of difference from GDAX/Kraken. Interesting. 228 EUR/ETH vs 220 EUR/ETH.
Does Bity support 24h transactions? Or is it only during swiss business hours?
What annoys me is that their Sell/Buy difference is pretty big (8%-9%) and on top of that their exchange rates are less interesting than the ones you find at Kraken.
Aye, business hours. You pay by IBAN and when it's approved it gets processed and sent off to you.
And now I have been verified by Kraken. Took a month plus
Being a globally savvy trader, I eventually decided to invest in Ethereum.
I waited until the very moment when the price was at its highest and invested my daughter's inheritance. I bought at $390.
Of course, immediately afterwards the price fell on its backside for the following 4 weeks, at one point as low as $155. (not including the moment it dropped to $0.10)
With the common sense of a dead fish, instead of cutting my losses, I've bought a little more. Today's price is $228.
Funny thing is. I haven't spent much money (not by EF income standards) and although noone likes to lose, I think Ethereum and other crypto-currencies have a long term future.
Along the way, I've learnt a bit about block-chain, smart contracts, ICO's and so on. If I have to hold the damn things until my daughter's grow up, so be it.
I use this site to track the price https://ethereumprice.org/ The volatility is unlike anything I've ever seen.
I never really followed ETH price even though a while back I tried programming in the language to see what it was all about. I'd never thought to buy it, but a 10k investment not that long ago would be worth about half a million. Crazy.
There are currently 900 cryptocurrencies and adding one every few weeks. How would one select the ones to buy? These currencies seem to differentiate to specific use categories. Looking of course for the next big thing instead of BTC and ETH..
I bought Ethereum at it's peak and watched the price tumble, it fell almost 2/3rds in just a couple of weeks. So, of course I bought more (like a fool). This time though, I paid a lower price.
I'm not day trading, I'm using the opportunity of investing, to educate myself about a technology that has the potential to be transformative.
A month ago, I started looking at some of the other distributed ledger platforms.
One stood out as interesting and early stages. IOTA does not use blockchain, (google Tangle) no mining, no slow or costly transactions and some interesting possibilities.
The IOTA team has received meaningful venture capital funding and is building an impressive management team. They are refreshingly not focussed on talking up the value of the token. Checkout the reddit community for IOTA coin.
The exchanges trading IOTA are very limited (I bought it using ethereum on Bitfinex). When more exchanges trade Iota and when they deliver on some of the incredible possibilities, who knows what will happen.
This morning, IOTA coin price grew by 11%, It also dropped in value by 25% in one day after the JP Morgan CEO slated bitcoin as a fraud.
I'm really interested in the technology and I will hold my (tiny) investments until my kids claim their inheritance or my account is hacked.
Thanks, similar objectives here. where do you store them?
At the moment, in the wallets provided by the exchange and I use 2FA.
The last couple of weeks have been interesting in the crypto money world.
After hovering around $300 for weeks, the price of Ether has risen, touching $475 today, an all time high. I don’t understand why.
I bought some Iota coin a few weeks ago at around $0.34 for 1m. Since I bought it, the price of this coin rose at one point to $0.97. Again, I don’t know why!
Bitcoin’s price has, over the last few days, exceeded $8,250.
If it keeps going like this, i’ll be wealthy enough to treat my kids to a McDonald’s on Christmas Day (without having to cross the border to France).
So, how's your french teacher enjoying retirement?