[DigitalToday reporter Yoonseo Lee] Veteran trader Peter Brandt (피터 브란트) raised questions about the reliability of trading infrastructure over a sharp Bitcoin drop that occurred only on Binance.

On Aug. 25 (local time), blockchain media outlet U.Today reported that Brandt said the move abnormally triggered retail stop-loss orders and liquidations of leveraged positions.

The move occurred during trading on Saturday, Aug. 22. On Binance’s 1-hour BTC/USD chart, a long lower wick formed as Bitcoin fell within seconds to $72,500. At the same time, the broader market held around $79,000.

A gap was also confirmed by comparing prices across exchanges. Coinbase’s low in the same time window was $75,800, and the price difference between the two exchanges widened to as much as $3,300. That gap alone created conditions in which margin for open leveraged positions held by Binance users could be exhausted and stop-loss orders could be executed in a chain reaction only on Binance, the report said.

Brandt described the incident as another example of a problem at Binance. He said retail traders were stopped out at prices far below the actual market low, and claimed Binance had again found a way to push its customers over the cliff. He also cited a similar case on Oct. 10, 2025, saying Binance already has a precedent of serious stop-loss liquidations.

The incident is also tied to the fragmented structure of crypto markets. Crypto trading has liquidity split across multiple private exchanges, so if a large market sell order hits one exchange, only that exchange’s order book can briefly be emptied. If a large sell order is filled on Binance, there may not be enough buy orders at the prevailing price to absorb it, pushing local quotes sharply lower, the report said.

A structure in which forced liquidations trigger additional sell orders then kicks in. The initial drop triggers liquidations of leveraged positions, and the liquidation process sends a new wave of sell orders, creating a cascading effect that drives prices lower. In this case, that flow grew like a snowball and pulled Bitcoin down to $72,500.

The risks of how reference prices for orders are set were also highlighted. If protective orders are placed based on the last traded price within an exchange, stop-losses and liquidations can be triggered even by a brief plunge that occurs only on a specific exchange in low-liquidity conditions. By contrast, using a mark price, a weighted reference price that reflects the broader market, was presented as effectively the only protection against such isolated plunges.

Because the abnormal price move occurred while diverging from the broader market trend, the incident again showed that liquidity differences across exchanges and the design of reference prices for orders can directly affect losses for retail investors. It can also be read as a warning that market participants should examine more closely exchanges’ execution structures and liquidation standards.

Another Binance boon-doggle On Aug 22, @binance some sucker retail traders got stopped out in Bitcoin a full $3,000 below the low of other exchanges Leave it to Binance to find a way to push its customers over the cliff. It has a history of historically gruesome stop-outs pic.twitter.com/7OhJDT77uf