Binance chief Changpeng Zhao referred to it as “Bloodbath day,” and many in the cryptosphere will echo those sentiments, as fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic reverberates through global markets. As crypto exchanges were thronged by frantic traders looking to capitalize on – or seek refuge from – the unprecedented market dump, several platforms buckled under the pressure.
Also read: Market Update: Global Economy Jolts Bitcoin, Overall Crypto Cap Loses $50B
Exchanges Struggle as Traders Get Busy
A panic-stricken sell-off of bitcoin and other risk-on digital assets has led to a number of crypto exchanges experiencing outages. On Thursday, March 12, Binance’s CZ noted that the platform’s load was 5x greater than all previous peaks. The exchange was handling 146,500 messages per second, with a 30GB/s market data push from a lone source. Aside from the occasional glitch, Zhao says systems appear to be holding up for now. Kraken was also briefly down earlier today.
Over on Bitmex, the Seychelles-based exchange experienced the most liquidations in 16 months: $702 million worth, $698 million of which were longs. The Ethereum network, meanwhile, has been toiling under heavy network congestion, with gas prices spiking to as high as $3.70 today, and transactions waiting hours to be processed. Binance has temporarily increased withdrawal fees for ETH and ERC20 tokens.
Network activity has been driven up by traders seeking to sell their holdings and under-collateralized defi positions being forcibly liquidated. ETH also nosedived by 35%, its most significant one-day decline since 2018. The price of BTC, meanwhile, fell below $6,000 for the first time since May while altcoins also plummeted. Against this wild backdrop, we have a halving on the horizon.
