it was probably a trader that stayed up all night to read the gox update, when it finally came in, he thought this is it the protocol is broken, and sold in a panic thinking the price would not bounce back because "this is the end of bitcoin"
and yes traders should have low ball orders for panic sells like this
probably wouldn't do much for the price, but it will mean cashing in on retarted panic sells
To be honest we have grown 2 orders of magnitude, and when you trade in a foreign currency you sometimes make mistakes.
I think he hit sell at $60 not 600 thinking mBTC. I think he is OK. Got most of his order filled at a good price. Definitely lack of sleep.
wow, I think this is the most likely scenario I have heard. (Adrian's hypothesis, not Adam's) I have once done the same sort of thing, hitting buy instead of sell, and your buy price is so low that all your coins go poof! I can imagine a scenario where someone who is long on fiat wants to put in a nice lowball order like buy 1000 bitcoin for 100 each. Instead he hits sell 1000 bitcoin for 100 each.
I've done it once, luckily I trade in 0.1 bitcoin increments, and btw, I hate all that mBTC "we need to change the standard so people can understand it easier"... maybe it will become the case in the future, but anyone playing with bitcoin right now needs to at minimum be able to understand the decimal system
(appologies, but while we're at it, could we please get the Europeans to just adopt the . as the decimal? and not the comma? like, 1.000.000,00 is just the wrong way to depict a million dollars. - sorry bout decimal rant)