Topic: BTC-e Flash Crash 10/02/14 (Read 9029 times)

I can confirm that *all* my buy orders, which went down to $377, were filled that day.  In my case it was only small amounts, but it definitely happened.

Daaaaaamn.. scary to think someone so clueless how an exchange works is in the bitcoin game.

Yes you are right. I made a mistake assuming that if a buy order was placed for $102, and a sell order was also placed for the EXACT price, they'll get matched. But your flash crash makes sense. It means that all the buy orders were fulfilled. All the way down to 102. Insane.

What Automatic meant was that in order for a buy order at $102 to be filled, *all* orders to buy *higher than $102* have to have been filled first.  This is a fundamental aspect of how any real exchange works.  So, your original description is incorrect.  What would actually happen is:

0. Assume the current highest bid is someone wants to buy at 10@$600
1. member 1 wants to sell Bitcoin
2. member 1 states his selling price. In this case, he inputs: 1@$102  This means 102 is the lowest he's willing to accept.  Obviously he'll take more if possible.  
3. The highest bid is 10@600, and so member 1 will sell 1@$600.  The best bid is now 9@$600.

If you don't believe me, go try it.  Put in an order to sell 0.01 BTC at $1.  You will get whatever price is shown as the best bid in the book (or close to it, if it changed during the moments you entered your order)

Now assume that the lowest offer to sell is at $700.

4. If member 2 wants to buy immediately "at market", he'll most likely buy at $700, because that was the lowest offer in the book.  It's possible if both orders showed up at the same instant that member 1 and member 2 might wind up meeting in the middle somewhere like $650, but I doubt any of the BTC exchanges would implement such an algorithm.  In no case should member 2 be able to buy for less than $600, because the guy who wanted to buy at $600 was there first, and gets priority.

What happens in a flash crash is something like this:
Suppose the book has buy orders for 10@100, 10@200, 10@300, 10@400, 10@500, and 10@600.
If member 1 tried to sell 55@$102, then he'd get 10 sold at $600, 10@500, ... 10@200.  That's 50.  The next 5 can't be sold for anything better than 102, so it becomes the best offer 5@102.  It will get filled when the next buyer willing to pay that shows up.

Did this transaction actually happen?  Could have just been a mistick in the data feed.

Nope, for a start it happened on BTC-E, and not Gox.

What the seller did was select a low number and dumped many, many Bitcoins filling all of the buy orders up to and including at least partially $102 buy order. You can't buy a really low price on BTC-E, it simply matches you with the best price then works down the buy orders.

Care to explain what your "ALL" statement means? You realize that an exchange means "exchange". It means I offer to sell a product for x, a buyer agrees to buy for x, and the exchange completes the transaction for a commission. There is no such thing as ALL. If there were 100 bitcoins for $102, then yes, all buy orders up to 100 bitcoins would have gotten it for that price. But that didn't happen.

"many" ? -> elaborate please.

It's not true. That user is known for trolling.

Actually if you check the raw data for the BTC-E transactions at 10:55am you will find that there were many Bitcoins sold to reach $102. It happened, those who had speculatively low buy orders ended up profited, most without even realising - what a great gift to receive.

I watched it happen and was sick that I didn't have my buy order in place, despite being in fiat. To those who profited, congratulations!

Last I checked for bitcoin wisdom to actually show the drop on the chart (and not the 'last offer'), ALL buy orders up to that value have to be removed.

Stop getting excited about the $102. It's not a big deal. It's just ONE successful buy order.

Here is exactly what happened:

1. MTGOX member 1 wants to sell Bitcoin.
2. MTGOX member 1 states his selling price. In this case, he inputs: $102
3. MTGOX member 2 wants to buy Bitcoin.
4. MTGOX member 2 selects: immediate buy

... MTGOX searches for cheapest buy offer.

5. MTGOX member 2 finds member 1's buy offer. 
6. Transaction complete.

He could have sold 0.0002 bitcoin for all we know for $102 - and it would have still showed up Bitcoinwisdom.

I set 1,000,000 btc buy order at 0.0001$ sudden flash crash and it gets filled. That's surely not luck.

BTC-e has been prone to flash crashes.  Their depth on the bid side's rather low, would not be a smart move to do a large market order.

I'd say BTC-E's anonymity is a PLUS instead of minus, BTC-E has proven their colors with time, as a trustworthy exchange (well at least for the 2 years I've been using them, they have been trustworthy, customer service is great too).

Especially in the current situation, where Bitcoin exchanges are being targeted (the bitinstant arrest, Russia problem). Anonymity is actually quite re-assuring, that an exchange would not be gone quickly due to government crackdown.

I don't think luck had anything to do with it. I believe he intentionally set the buy order, no?

"Such"...

I missed that thread, I don't usually read the Loans forum. Amazing thing you and the other guys did there! Dogs are the greatest creatures on this planet, and this kind of thing helps me believe there's still hope for mankind.

ATTENTION:  Realize no one person bought or sold 10,000 coins.  IF, the price really did drop like that to 100, thousands of people bought and sold fractions, and maybe a 100 or 200 coins.  There was 100000+ transactions that happened in those few moments.....IF they actually happened at all.

Sutch luck...if you would want to exchange some bitcents i could make my gf show you her tits..
Well, joke i have no gf but can show u mine thought.

I doubt the price even went down that low.