Bitcoin’s Price Slides $1,000 in 30 Minutes After Margin Calls at Bitmex

Bitcoin tumbled 9 percent in a half-hour on Tuesday, sending prices to the lowest in three months, in a rapid selloff even by the tumultuous standards of the cryptocurrency markets.

As of 21:50, BTC was trading around $8,600, down from a high of $9,812 over the previous 24 hours.

“Even for bitcoin, this is a pretty rare event,” said Qiao Wang, director of product at Messari, a New York-based cryptocurrency-focused data and research firm.

The price started to plunge around 18:30 UTC and stabilized around 19:00.

A trader, who wished to remain anonymous, said the price drop may have been exacerbated by margin calls and contract liquidations on Bitmex, a Seychelles-based exchange that provides customers with 100x leverage, essentially loans to traders that multiply the size of an investment by 100 times.

The margin calls were noted by DataMish, a data platform. We contacted Bitmex for comment but were unable to reach a representative at press time.

BitMex Margin Call Data via DataMish.

Prices hit $8,627 at time of publishing.

Bear image via Shutterstock