Bitcoin enthusiasts love a good conspiracy theory. So this weekend, when the blockchain (Bitcoins built-in ledger system) showed that a single Bitcoin collector was trying to sell 30,000 Bitcoin all at once at a price of $300 per coin (or $9 million in total), the cryptocurrencys fan base started digging for answers. A sell order that big meant that someone with a lot of Bitcoin was trying to sell down his or her holdings, fast. Been in bitcoin a long time and this has got to be the most bizarre thing Ive seen, one poster wrote. Pretty soon, the anonymous trader had a nickname: BearWhale, an homage to JPMorgan Chases notorious London Whale. Nobody knows why BearWhale, whoever he/she/they is/are, is so eager to sell. But this was no casual maneuver. The huge sell order, which was placed through a Bitcoin exchange called Bitstamp, was so large that it distorted the Bitcoin markets, temporarily putting up a wall that caused the price of Bitcoin to stall at $300 for several hours while all 30,000 of the sellers coins were sold off. (All of BearWhales $300 sell order has now apparently been filled, and the price of a Bitcoin has moved up, to around $340.)
Posted on: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 07:40:48 +0000
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