Bitcoin price suddenly plummeted 87%, down to 8,200 USD on Binance US exchange

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has just experienced an incident in the US and caused the price of Bitcoin to plunge by 87%, from nearly 65,000 USD to only 8,200 USD. The incident happened yesterday morning (October 21) in US time and only appeared in the US, then the price quickly recovered.

In a subsequent announcement, Binance USA said that “the trading algorithm of 1 institutional customer had a technical error and triggered a large sell-off. They have now fixed the error and it looks like it problem solved”.

592.8 Bitcoins, worth nearly $40 million, were traded quickly.

In the financial world, these errors happen when traders enter the wrong price or volume when placing an order. Too much volume will cause the price to drop sharply. The last time the US stock market encountered such a “flash crash” error was in May 2020.

And in the crypto world, such incidents happen more often. Right in October, Synthetify, a decentralized exchange, had to temporarily close shortly after opening because the Pyth Network had an error. In September Pyth had a similar problem and caused Bitcoin price to drop 90% in an instant.