A little-known VOXEL trading pair on cryptocurrency exchange Bitget suddenly clocked over $12 billion in volume on April 20, dwarfing the metrics of t
A little-known VOXEL trading pair on cryptocurrency exchange Bitget suddenly clocked over $12 billion in volume on April 20, dwarfing the metrics of the same contract on Binance.
The activity centered on VOXEL/USDT perpetual futures, where traders reported instant order fills — an anomaly many described as a bug that allowed savvy traders to rack up outsized profits by exploiting unusual price behavior.
The atypical metrics drew Bitget’s attention. In the fallout of its early investigation, the exchange suspended accounts suspected of market manipulation and rolled back irregular trades that occurred throughout the day. Traders who copped losses during that period were offered compensation.
Bitget’s response and remediation plan may have prevented lasting investor damage, but the episode is the latest in a series of cases that raise questions about how exchanges handle market makers, internal systems and user safeguards. While Bitget promotes an open API and regularly touts its global market maker program, it has yet to disclose who was behind the April 20 activity or what technical factors led to it.
The lack of incident-level detail has fueled speculations comparable to similar breakdowns on Binance — the world’s largest exchange by trading volume — that included the sudden price crashes of cryptocurrencies GoPlus (GPS) and MyShell (SHELL) in March. Binance kicked out an unnamed market maker it found responsible for manipulation, but the lack of disclosure added fuel to the crypto industry’s infamous rumor mongering.
Traders VOXEL market maker bug, Bitget disagrees
Crypto market participants pointed to rapid price fluctuations and what multiple Mandarin-language X accounts described as a bug in a “market maker” bot as the cause of VOXEL’s excessive volume.
Traders claimed that VOXEL’s price flickered between several ranges, such as $0.125 and $0.138. Orders placed between those bands filled instantly due to the suspected bug, X user Dylan said, sharing screenshots and videos of profitable accounts. Perpetual futures contracts are typically matched through an order book, with each trade requiring a counterparty. But in this case, trades appeared to execute automatically and without delay.
Traders who spotted the suspected bug early used high-leverage bets to boost their profits, X user Qingshui said, calling the strategy a “zero-cost exploit.” Like Dylan, Qingshui attributed the issue to a market maker bot misfiring and questioned why traders were blocked from accessing profits if the problem originated from Bitget’s side.
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A third user, Hebi555, pointed the finger at Bitget’s market-making team for its poor performance. Xie Jiayin, Bitget’s head of Asia, clapped back, stating that the exchange works with over 1,000 market makers and institutional clients. He added that Bitget’s API is open to the public and emphasized that specific market maker identities could not be disclosed due to confidentiality agreements.
In an April 20 response to Cointelegraph, Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said that suspicious trades were between individual market participants, not the platform. Replying to Cointelegraph’s follow-up inquiry on April 21, Chen neither confirmed nor denied whether a market maker bot was involved, only reiterating that the trading was “between users.”
“We are conducting a thorough review, and once the rollback is completed, trading and account restrictions will be lifted as appropriate. Bitget’s security infrastructure is designed to catch irregularities like this in real time — as it did in this case,” Chen said.
Bitget’s VOXEL anomaly adds to crypto’s market manipulation mystery
Concerns over market manipulation in the cryptocurrency industry have been intensifying. In early March, the prices of two tokens, GPS and SHELL, crashed in tandem with their Binance listings.
The exchange’s investigation found that the two tokens employed the same unnamed market maker. Binance banished the dubious trading firm from its platform and confiscated its proceeds to help fund compensation efforts for GPS and SHELL traders. Without a suspect to blame, social media users began pointing fingers at several market makers and trading firms. Those named denied any involvement.
Binance then kicked out another unnamed market maker, this time for trading activities related to the Movement (MOVE) token. The MOVE token’s market maker on Binance was found to have associations with the market maker for GPS and SHELL.
Related: Market maker…
cointelegraph.com