Analysis: Yesterday, the BTC and ETH spot minute charts showed unusual fluctuations, possibly due to a market-making robot experiencing a liquidation

The founder of crypto market maker Wintermute, Evgeny Gaevoy, analyzed the unusual fluctuations in the 1-minute charts of Bitcoin and ETH spot markets on February 8th. He indicated that it is likely due to a market-making bot experiencing a liquidation, with losses potentially reaching tens of millions of dollars. The unusual fluctuations were caused by the bot's losses rather than any malicious intent from market makers, and Wintermute was clearly not involved.

Evgeny Gaevoy further expressed skepticism regarding rumors of "large institutions facing liquidation" in the market, and even if such cases do exist, they would not have a medium to long-term impact. In contrast to the past collapses of Three Arrows Capital and FTX, where liquidation news spread quickly and there were clear signs indicating the validity of the liquidations, such as institutions seeking rescue, the current market rumors mainly come from anonymous accounts and have not been confirmed by reliable sources.

The leverage in this cycle primarily comes from perpetual contracts. Trading platforms no longer take risks with user assets to invest in low-liquidity assets or extend special credit as they did in the past. The tightening of credit has resulted in institutional credit sizes being less than $2 billion, which limits the impact and makes it difficult to trigger a chain liquidation like in 2022.

Previous reports indicated that on February 8th, there were unusual fluctuations in the 1-minute charts of Bitcoin and ETH spot markets, with single-minute amplitudes exceeding 1% and even 3% from 00:05 to 00:17.