Bitcoin flash crashed on Kraken exchange only from 37,500 to 35,000 back to 37,500 again in a millisecond. This caused me to lose 8000usd when it triggered a stop loss at 36,200 and sold at 35,400. No other exchanges experienced this flash crash. I wish I could upload a picture of the graph.
It can be seen here at 17:30 UTC:
https://bitcoinwisdom.io/markets/kraken/btcusdSingle second spike down and right back to 37,500. I talked to a manager at Kraken and he said the exchange functioned as it should (of course).
It probably did. There was ~800 BTC volume in that 3-minute candle, which is significant for Kraken.
This is what happens when somebody dumps a bunch of coins into a thin book. All the bids get eaten up,
and then market stop orders get triggered. Someone dumped the price down near $35,400. Since that was past your stop loss trigger, your position got market sold at that point.
Also, he blamed me and said I should have used stop limit instead of stop loss.
It's something to consider in the future. A stop limit would have triggered a limit sell at $36,200 instead of market selling at $35,400. The danger of a stop limit order though is that price wasn't guaranteed to return to $36,200.
I feel I was cheated out by Kraken and lost thousands. Not sure what to do about this or if anything can be done. Has anyone else experienced anything like this before? Thank you in advance, Joseph
It's called a "stop run" or "stop hunt."
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/stophunting.asp It's not Kraken's fault, although you'll experience less of these candles on a more liquid exchange like Coinbase Pro.
Price ended up dropping to the $33,000s several hours later anyway.....
