Coinbase Bitcoin Price Plummets to $0.06, and the World is Shocked

It's not often that huge price errors occur on Bitcoin exchanges. However, for some reason, Coinbase's exchange GDAX briefly saw $0.06 worth of Bitcoin yesterday. Yes, this is definitely not April Fools' Day. You can buy 1 BTC for just $0.06. The incident occurred after the exchange went through routine maintenance. Fortunately, this price anomaly did not have much impact on global Bitcoin trading.

Cheap Bitcoin on GDAX

Many traders (or at least all of them) were shocked when they saw the Bitcoin price on GDAX at $0.06. In that instant, BTC/USD plummeted by 99.9%. With a trading volume of about 100 BTC, traders immediately panicked. As a result, the Bitcoin price remained at $0.06 for a while before returning to normal levels. This event was quite interesting to say the least.

“GDAX’s order book has flash crashed. — I am Nomad (@IamNomad) April 16, 2017”

It is worth noting that GDAX had just completed scheduled maintenance before the incident. However, the exchange immediately resumed market trading after the incident, but did not clear the orders during the incident. Traders immediately bought and sold Bitcoin at an unprecedented rate. In this incident, those who bought Bitcoin at $0.06 were more than happy. This has never happened on any other Bitcoin exchange.

One thing to note is the impact of this price anomaly on the global average price of Bitcoin. Many websites use the prices provided by GDAX to calculate the futures index price. The crash to $0.06 had a big impact on this index, to say the least. Due to this incident, the average price index of Bitcoin briefly fell to $888.48. Unfortunately, some BitMEX users actually liquidated their positions at low prices during this period. However, the exchange said that it will refund all affected users.

Obviously, incidents like this can happen at any time. It is not clear why GDAX did not clear out the orders before resuming trading . This may be a one-time incident, but it is still necessary to remain vigilant in the future. If this incident happens again in the future, futures exchanges that use the average price as a price index will be affected again.

Furthermore, if this problem happens again, the Bitcoin price may not be as lucky as this time and may fall sharply.