BitMEX Whale Drives Bitcoin Price Down to $8.9K in Sell-Off

BitMEX launched an investigation after an unusual drop in BTC spot price caused by a mysterious entity selling over 400 BTC in batches.

Cryptocurrency derivative transactions took place, leading to a momentary dip in Bitcoin’s spot price on BitMEX. This prompted the exchange to launch an investigation into what they deemed as “unusual activity” following user observations of the price decline.

At approximately one in the morning UTC, users on X noticed an abnormality in the spot market for Bitcoin and Tether on BitMEX. This aberration temporarily pushed the price of Bitcoin down to approximately $8,900.

BitMEX Launches Investigation

Reportedly, an unidentified entity swiftly sold over 400 bitcoins. After confirming the massive sell order for Bitcoin and USDT on the spot market, The exchange launched an internal investigation into the incident.

The movement did not impact BitMEX’s derivatives markets or the values of the XBT derivatives contracts, according to the exchange.

The cryptocurrency researcher Syq claims that the mysterious whale sold over 400 bitcoins in bunches ranging from 10 to 50 bitcoins over 2 hours.

Another thing that the researcher discovered was that the exchange had turned off the withdrawals from specific accounts. In response to the instances of account blocking, BitMEX issued the following statement:

“Just to clarify: We have NOT disabled withdrawals for all users, but only for a few accounts that are part of the investigation.”

BitMEX also confirmed that its trading platform is functioning regularly and that all funds are secure.

In the past, Arthur Hayes, who had previously served as the CEO of BitMEX expressed his opinion that the spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have the potential to “destroy” Bitcoin if they achieve an excessive level of popularity.

According to Hayes, this would negatively impact the number of transactions on the Bitcoin network and remove any incentive for miners to continue verifying transactions.

Bitcoin ETF issuers having 100% of the BTC would have a detrimental influence on the number of transactions. 

According to Hayes, this forces miners to shut down their machines because they cannot afford the energy required to keep them operational. Without miners, the network will collapse, resulting in the permanent loss of Bitcoin.