Bitcoin’s price is currently around $10,300 at the time of this writing – but not everywhere, it appears. On Kraken, Bitcoin was trading for $12,000 per coin due to an order matching glitch that the exchange has identified to be the reason for the abnormally high price of the coin.
The bug was first noticed on Friday, September 13th when the XBT/USD pair on Kraken experienced a $2,000 deviation in both directions. What this means is that some were able to buy Bitcoin for $8,000 and sell it for $12,000 and benefit immensely from the glitch.
One day after the bug was detected, Kraken came out with a statement explaining what has happened:
Yesterday a test of an unreleased advanced order type encountered a bug which resulted in the order’s prices being matched against the wrong side of the book. Some clients bought from the tester at $8000 and others sold at $12000 without clearing the intervening liquidity.
After much frustration and much happiness experienced from a lot of people, Kraken’s CEO, Jesse Powell, said that it is normal for technical bugs to appear in trying to refine the automated order matching algorithms.
While Kraken states that no liquidations appeared neither on the $8,000 nor on the $12,000 side, some traders have come forward to say that they had put buy orders in the mid of the range.
The biggest concern in a case like this? What regulators think about Bitcoin and its volatility. The Bitcoin community is trying to strengthen the position of the “people’s currency” and regulators are not yet convinced. Such “bugs” are not only detrimental to the trading community, but also to the entire image of Bitcoin and the perception left with important regulatory bodies.