From past one week we've been seeing a major pull back in the altcoins markets. All alts, small or big, which an upcoming release or conference saw a blood bath.
The initial response was to think that everyone is dumping altcoins in order to buy bitcoins so as to get free Bitcoin Gold. This was well taken in the crytouniverse and the rally continued, soon there was panic and the whole alt coin market crashed in all the exchanged. Alts were available for cheap and we say Bitcoin soaring to new heights.
But was it actually because of Bitcoin's Hard Fork ?
Well, The Crypto Syndicate published an analysis which speculates it being a screw up by world's largest exchange, Bittrex. Observe the following graph carefully.
Between the hours of 1200 and 0900 at UTC-4 on 8th October 2017, as shown in the red highlighted portion of the graph, we can see that majority of the alts were dumped at exactly the same time and with almost a similar pattern.
When the same alts were compared during the same time in other exchanges like Binance, Kraken, Bitstamp, Coinbase, GDAX, Coss, Cryptopia, Yobit this pattern was not observed. Rather it was later observed that, the pattern was a response of what was happening in Bittrex
This makes this event more suspicious and speculative. To have such a beautiful and well co-ordinated dump, it need high synchronization and high levels of precision which is not possible by human hands and can only be achieved by bots.
But, how is Bittrex responsible ?
Any exchange dumps a certain amount of the commission into the market so as to make an earning. This activity is done slowly by taking a longer time span into consideration so that it doesn't affect the price of the currency into the market and also not to attract analysts like the crypto syndicate. This is done by well trained and programmed bots which have various variables fixed to operate.
So, according to the speculations, Bittrex screwed up with their bots or someone played around with the variables which led to this massive dumping of these alts that such a short interval of time. This may be by mistake or it could to done deliberately.
Did I just say deliberately ?
Yes, I did say deliberately. Bittrex is collaborating with an Korean's biggest exchange UpBit and will start operations end of this October. UpBit will host more 100 cyptocurrencies in a country with only 10-12 crytos listed. Bittrex being a partner with UpBit could have deliberately slashed the prices of the alts so that it's Korean clients could get them in cheap. This event could have well been camouflaged and times between the Bitcoin Hard Fork. Well played Bittrex.
What it means for Bitcoin and other alts ?
If this theory is true, then the Bitcoin surge has happened with the new money which has pumped into the market (at least most of it is). This money would flow into the bleeding alt markets once the fork concludes, which means we will see epic bull runs in the coming weeks.
2) Imagine the amount of Korean volume which pump into alts once UpBit is live. It gives me goosebumps thinking about it. We will see new All Time Highs, new records broken and a lot of happy faces.
So, HODL and sit tight on your crypto bags. The Bulls are coming.
Nice article, but one thing I want to point out is that,
The bot screwing up thing is a theory which i was also thinking and it may be true especially if we see all altcoins falling on bittrex in the same pattern, but I dont think bittrex can deliberately slash prices of altcoins..... :P
It's all speculations. But, i won't be surprised it would have actually happened
Interesting Read ! I hope The market Recovers Soon ! HODL :)
Which is why HODL is laife! :)