A hacker compromised a whale account holding 1,200 BTC, placed orders to purchase BTC at artificially low prices, then dumped the stolen BTC to trigger execution and pocket $10.45M from liquidations of other users' positions.

On June 2, Bitcoin flash-crashed on a major Bitcoin trading platform Kraken. The near vertical drop from $11,200 CAD to $100 CAD within moments initially appeared to have resulted from a technical glitch or a fat-fingered trading error by a whale. In this case, the available evidence suggests a hacker compromised a whale’s account, stole 1200 BTC worth $10.45 million on that date, and then dumped this huge amount of BTC into a highly illiquid BTC/CAD marke.