Did Bitcoin Really Experience A Flash Crash Down To $5,400?

Bitcoin has been plagued by numerous dips that have left the price of the asset at one-month lows. Monday was brutal for the cryptocurrency as the close of the weekend drew in with its low momentum in the market. This, in turn, led to the market experiencing a downtrend. Most notable was the price of bitcoin actually dropping into the $42,000 price range.

While the market dealt with this, a record flash crash happened on the trading platform Pyth Network. The crash was so significant that it saw the price of bitcoin lose almost 90% of its current value. The price crash lasted for approximately two minutes. Driving the price of bitcoin down to as low as $5,400 on Monday. The crash happened between the BTC <> USD pair on the Pyth Network. The Solana-based solution also saw the confidence interval (four times the asset reported price) for bitcoin drop to $21,623.

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Between 12:21 and 12:23 UTC the Pyth BTCUSD aggregate price was below $40,000 – the lowest price reported was $5,402 with a confidence interval of $21,623 (4x the asset reported price) for a single slot – which was off-market relative to the BTC price available on other markets

— Pyth (@PythNetwork) September 20, 2021

Pyth Network acknowledged the crash on their Twitter account, where they assured their users that they were working to figure out what caused this. “Engineers are continuing to investigate the cause and a full report is in the works,” it said.

BTC price recovers after falling to low $40K | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com
Why Did Bitcoin Crash So Much?

It is still not clear what the reason behind the crash was. So far, there seem to be no other pairs affected by the crash. And no other cryptocurrencies have been reported to have suffered the same fate as bitcoin. The crash led to massive liquidations on the platform, which were, “unfortunately working as intended,” tweeted Bonfida.

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The crash no doubt affected a number of Pyth Network users. The network has apologized to affected users, saying, “We’re very sorry for any hurt incurred for Pyth customers.” And the team has asked those affected by the flash crash to reach out to the team either through Twitter or Discord. The team continues to work on figuring out the cause of the crash and will produce a report of their investigations.

Featured image from Yahoo Finance, chart from TradingView.com