A “flash crash” on US-based crypto exchange Kraken saw Bitcoin prices on the XBTCAD charts (BTC/CAD) plummet more than 99%.

Bitcoins for Sale at Bargain Basement Prices

For five brief, shining minutes, investors buying Bitcoin with Canadian dollars (CAD) on Kraken were able to snag the cryptocurrency at prices not seen since July 2013.

Thursday evening the price of Bitcoin crashed more than 99% on the XBTCAD charts (BTC/CAD), plummeting from $11,299 (US$8,342) to just $101.20 (US$74.72).

By contrast, during that same period, prices on the XBTUSD charts (BTC/USD) only fell by around 6.4% – from $8,534 to $7,988.

What Caused the Flash Crash

BitcoinerX reached out to Kraken about the incident and a member of its trading support staff offered the following explanation:

After a review of the large wick, a volume of 1.391k XBT was traded on our XBTCAD market within a 5 minute period. […] We aren’t able to prevent any large orders, but this may have been caused by a sell limit order that was placed on the wrong side of the market, and so was executed like a market sell. In many cases, this is due to a high volume client setting the price incorrectly while creating their order.

The support tech also noted that Kraken’s XBTCAD market has less liquidity than either XBTUSD or XBTEUR, meaning that a large order on its CAD market would “likely clear one side of the order book.”

While several overly optimistic XBTCAD buyers just missed $100 bitcoins, at least one buyer got incredibly lucky. The seller? Not so much.

“[T]he price snapped back to normal and this probably caused the large seller a considerable loss, because the had sold so much XBT at such low prices,” he added.

Images courtesy of Kraken, DepositPhoto