Ethereum "Flash Crash" and Responsible Reporting
The cryptocurrency market has taken a major hit recently, and the bad press surrounding the "flash crash" of Ethereum is, unfortunately, a factor. However, it is largely being misrepresented and misreported in the media.
If you're not familiar with the story, GDAX, an exchange run by Coinbase, experienced a brief drop in ETH prices which bottomed out around $0.10 US. The drop happened in a matter of seconds and trading was restored at relatively normal prices almost instantly.
So, did Ethereum crash? No. Ethereum is traded on numerous exchanges worldwide every day. The average trading price of ETH would have been relatively stable even with the flash crash. So, why do all the headlines say that ETH crashed? Probably to get clicks.
Apparently, a user put in a large market sell order and as that order. A market sell order will continue to sell all of the currency placed on the order until it is gone. This filled a very large number of buy orders, but the buy orders were at much lower price points than the market was trading at. The price of the "last trade" dropped quickly and dramatically. That drop in price triggered automatic trading that is generally in place to prevent total losses from occurring if a market suddenly loses massive value. These are called stop trades.
Once the stop trades kicked in, it was a race to the bottom that lasted seconds. The trading price dropped all the way down to about $0.10 before it nearly instantly rebounded to normal levels.
GDAX released two statements once they had a chance to review what had happened. The first statement effectively said that there was no foul-play in the trading and all trades were final. The second statement was the more interesting one as it said that the exchange was going to make all traders who lost ETH as a result of the flash crash whole, meaning that they would restore account balances to their pre-crash values out of their own pocket.
The flash crash provided a real-world scenario that caused a major problem, will be analyzed and corrected, and didn't significantly affect trading accounts that will be made whole. So, why aren't the positives being highlighted more? It is spurring changes at the exchanges no doubt to prevent this from happening again, and GDAX went out of their way to make traders whole without legislation or litigation.
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