What is truly worth considering is how trading platforms can uphold safety standards during expansion, how arbitrageurs can pursue profits without crossing legal boundaries, and how the entire industry can grow through repeated shocks and repairs.
Author: OneShotBug
## I. Background of the Incident and Analytical Perspective
On April 20, 2025, the global cryptocurrency trading platform Bitget experienced a trading anomaly that sparked widespread discussion. Within just half an hour, the VOXEL/USDT perpetual contract saw an abnormal price surge, with trading volume dramatically increasing, severely deviating from normal market conditions. In response, Bitget announced a rollback of trades during the anomaly period and implemented a series of measures, including freezing involved accounts, recovering improper gains, and airdropping to regular users.
This incident quickly ignited market discussions about the legality and reasonableness of "trade rollbacks" and whether the platform's responsibilities were adequately fulfilled. As a rare large-scale rollback operation in the cryptocurrency market in recent years, this handling not only involves user rights protection but also touches on multiple dimensions such as platform risk control, trading ethics, and industry norms.
This article will objectively and rationally restore the full picture of the incident, analyze the behaviors and responsibilities of all parties involved, and particularly explore the reasonableness of Bitget's choice to roll back trades through a review of traditional financial market rollback cases. Ultimately, it aims to provide readers with a clear and fair basis for judgment, rather than being swayed by emotional controversies.
## II. The VOXEL Anomaly Incident: Timeline and Cause Analysis
1. Timeline Review
From 16:00 to 16:30 (UTC+8) on April 20, 2025, the VOXEL/USDT perpetual contract on the Bitget platform suddenly experienced severe fluctuations. In just 30 minutes, the price of the VOXEL contract skyrocketed from about $0.30 to nearly $1.00, an increase of over 230%. During the same period, the trading volume of the VOXEL contract surged to over $12 billion, surpassing Bitcoin contracts to become the highest trading volume on the platform. A large number of users engaged in high-frequency trading during the anomaly, leading to extreme market chaos.
2. Description of Anomalies:
During the incident, the transaction price of the VOXEL contract severely deviated from the normal market price, with high-leverage small orders being executed intensively, and some limit orders being quickly swept away, causing the order book to become extremely thin. Market data showed:
- The transaction depth dropped by over 90% compared to normal conditions;
- The bid-ask spread widened to more than 10 times the normal level;
- The highest price had a premium of nearly 300% compared to the reference spot market price.
Normal trading logic was completely disrupted, with prices exhibiting a "spiral one-sided surge," and other markets on the platform were also temporarily impacted, triggering a chain reaction.
3. Preliminary Cause Analysis:
According to Bitget's official report, on-chain analysis institutions, and industry observers' comprehensive speculation, the main causes of the incident include:
Market Maker System Anomaly: Some market maker bots on the Bitget platform experienced system failures around 16:00 on April 20, unable to continuously provide reasonable quotes, leading to an instant loss of normal liquidity support in the market.
Arbitrage Group Manipulation: After detecting the system anomaly, at least 8 professional arbitrage accounts quickly surged in, using high leverage (some reaching 50-100 times) to open positions, repeatedly pushing up prices and quickly closing positions for arbitrage, further distorting prices. The participating arbitrage team, qntxxx, also explained their operational methods and past behaviors in an interview.
(For details, see: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/wD2uSE_B5Pz0yZfjeo7pLw)
- Risk Control Mechanism Not Triggered in Time: Some risk control parameters of Bitget failed to identify the extreme transaction structure, delaying the initiation of market circuit breakers or trading limits.
In summary, this is a typical composite market event of "technical system fragility + human arbitrage amplification."
4. Measures Taken by Bitget
After the incident, Bitget quickly organized an emergency response and took the following measures (original link https://x.com/xiejiayinBitget/status/1916475194383688167):
Trade Rollback: Reviewed and rolled back all transaction records of the VOXEL/USDT contract during the period from 16:00 to 16:30 on April 20, canceling a total of approximately $12 billion in abnormal trading volume.
Account Freezing: Frozen 8 accounts suspected of malicious arbitrage, with a total frozen amount exceeding $20 million, and initiated legal accountability processes, sending legal letters to relevant parties.
User Airdrop: Committed to returning 100% of the recovered improper gains to affected regular user accounts through an airdrop model.
System Upgrade and Review: Simultaneously launched an emergency repair plan for the internal risk control system and promised to release a complete accident investigation report, publicly announcing subsequent improvement measures.
Bitget emphasized that the losses caused by this incident would be borne by the platform internally, and ordinary users would not be held accountable, specifically stating:
The principle of rollback is to correct abnormal profits and losses; users' principal and transaction fees will not incur losses. After the rollback is completed, some users' transaction fees were mistakenly deducted, and the fees for related accounts have been refunded, ensuring that no user suffers losses of principal or fees in this incident.
Before the risk control measures took effect, the abnormal profits withdrawn from the platform amounted to 38.31 million USDT. Apart from the approximately 20 million USDT of abnormal profits related to the aforementioned 8 accounts, all other withdrawn funds will not be pursued.
From this, it can be seen that Bitget's current actions are solely targeted at the 8 abnormal accounts, and all losses for affected users have been fully compensated.
## III. Arbitrage Behavior and Platform Responsibility: Attribution of Actions
1. Analysis of Arbitrage Group Behavior
In this incident, some professional arbitrage groups quickly organized high-frequency, high-leverage trading upon discovering the anomaly in Bitget's market-making system, using extremely low costs to push up the price of the VOXEL contract, creating artificial market distortions, and profiting by escaping after raising prices.
From an operational perspective, this type of arbitrage is not based on real market supply and demand relationships or reasonable price discovery processes, but rather is an organized exploitation of platform system vulnerabilities to obtain abnormal profits that are severely disproportionate to market risks.
In traditional financial markets, similar behavior is typically classified as market manipulation or exploitation of system failures, which are explicitly prohibited. Such actions undermine market fairness and directly harm normal traders.
Therefore, although it appears to be based on trading mechanisms, from the perspective of market integrity, such arbitrage behavior actually lacks legitimacy. The platform's actions to roll back trades, freeze accounts, and recover profits align with the industry's conventional practices to ensure trading fairness in extreme situations.
2. Analysis of Bitget's Platform Behavior
(1) System Responsibility
As the operator of the trading platform, Bitget exposed significant technical and risk control flaws in this incident. Specifically, the market-making system anomaly was not timely monitored and identified, and the risk control mechanism failed to effectively prevent the uncontrolled transaction prices, ultimately leading to market disorder and actual losses for users.
For this systemic risk failure, Bitget, as the platform party, should bear an inescapable direct responsibility. After the incident, Bitget publicly acknowledged the failure of its risk control and committed to system review and upgrades.
(2) Emergency Response
After the incident occurred, Bitget initiated an emergency response, taking measures including:
- Rolling back the VOXEL contract trading records during the anomaly period;
- Freezing 8 accounts suspected of abnormal arbitrage to prevent illegal profit outflow;
- Announcing that 100% of the recovered improper gains would be airdropped to affected regular users;
- Clearly stating that it would not pursue ordinary users for positive earnings resulting from trades during the anomaly period;
- Initiating internal investigations and system improvement measures, planning to publicly report the investigation results.
These measures somewhat alleviated the direct impact of the incident on ordinary users, ensuring that retail investors' funds and normal profits, including transaction fees, would not incur losses.
(3) Responsibility and Follow-up Actions
Bitget has clear systemic responsibility in this incident, but it has taken several remedial measures afterward to restore user confidence and market order, such as airdropping recovered amounts and not pursuing ordinary user profits, indicating its choice to bear economic consequences in the face of the incident.
From a broader perspective, trading platforms in the rapidly developing cryptocurrency industry must continuously strengthen risk control before, during, and after incidents. Only by establishing a risk management system based on more mature and self-disciplined foundations can similar incidents be effectively prevented.
## IV. Historical Reflection: Cases of Anomalous Trading Handling in Traditional Markets and Cryptocurrency Fields
In traditional financial industries, when trading prices deviate severely from reasonable ranges due to technical failures, system anomalies, or extreme operations, exchanges typically cancel, adjust, or roll back abnormal trades based on clear rules. In the cryptocurrency field, major exchanges have also experienced similar incidents and have adopted similar measures to respond to special situations, while illegal profits obtained through system vulnerabilities are often pursued criminally, with improper gains recovered and ultimately leading to imprisonment.
The following reviews multiple typical cases to reflect on how mainstream markets handle extreme anomalous trading and their legal attitudes.
1. The "Flash Crash" of U.S. Stocks on May 6, 2010
On May 6, 2010, U.S. stocks experienced a historically rare "flash crash": the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted nearly 1,000 points in five minutes, with approximately $1 trillion in market value evaporating instantly. Investigations revealed that a large mutual fund company (Waddell & Reed) sold futures contracts on a large scale through algorithmic programs, and high-frequency traders (HFT) exacerbated market volatility through repeated trading, triggering a chain reaction.
At this time, British trader Navinder Singh Sarao used a "spoofing" strategy to create false liquidity, further amplifying the crash effect. Individual stock prices experienced extreme fluctuations, with Procter & Gamble's stock price plummeting nearly 37% at one point.
After the incident, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) jointly investigated and canceled over 6,000 abnormal trades based on the "obvious error" rule. Regulatory agencies subsequently introduced circuit breaker mechanisms to prevent similar extreme events in the future.
2. The "Fat Finger" Error by Deutsche Bank in June 2015
In June 2015, a junior employee at Deutsche Bank was left in charge of the foreign exchange sales team's trading operations while their supervisor was on vacation. While handling a transaction with a U.S. hedge fund client, the employee mistakenly entered the "net amount" as the "total amount," resulting in an erroneous payment of $6 billion to the client. Deutsche Bank discovered the error the following day and immediately took steps to recover the full amount.
The bank subsequently reported the incident to regulatory bodies including the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the European Central Bank (ECB), and the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed). This incident exposed deficiencies in Deutsche Bank's technical and operational controls, particularly the lack of supervision and automated detection mechanisms in critical positions. Following the incident, Deutsche Bank conducted a comprehensive review of its internal control systems and, under the leadership of new CEO John Cryan, announced significant reforms aimed at streamlining management structures, improving operational efficiency, and strengthening risk control.
3. June 2024 NYSE Technical Glitch Causes Abnormal Trading of Berkshire Hathaway and Other Stocks
On June 3, 2024, a technical glitch at the New York Stock Exchange caused abnormal price fluctuations in several stocks, including Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares. The price of Berkshire A shares plummeted from over $620,000 to $185.10, a drop of 99.97%. This abnormal pricing persisted for about two hours, during which over 3,000 shares were traded.
The root of the glitch was an error in the industry price band published by the Consolidated Tape Association (CTA), which triggered the Limit Up-Limit Down (LULD) mechanism, causing multiple stocks to be halted from trading. The CTA later stated that the issue might have been caused by a new software version and resolved the problem by switching to a backup data center's software version.
The New York Stock Exchange subsequently announced the cancellation of all trades of Berkshire A shares executed at prices of $603,718.30 or below between 9:50 AM and 9:51 AM Eastern Time, clearly stating that these erroneous trades would be considered invalid and that traders would have no right to appeal this decision.
Additionally, other affected stocks included Barrick Gold, NuScale Power, and Chipotle, all of which experienced similar price anomalies and trading halts.
4. 2015 Maonan District Zhang Peng's Case of Profiting from System Vulnerabilities
In 2015, the People's Court of Maonan District in Maoming City tried a case involving illegal profits obtained by exploiting vulnerabilities in a virtual asset trading platform (Case No.: (2015) Maonan Criminal Initial No. 112).
The case revealed that in March 2014, the defendant Zhang Peng discovered a system vulnerability on a certain virtual currency trading platform that allowed for "doubling funds by placing and then canceling orders." Zhang Peng subsequently registered multiple UID accounts and repeatedly exploited the vulnerability, illegally profiting 141,866 yuan. He then transferred the illegally obtained funds to other accounts and used them to purchase the virtual currency "Litecoin," further cashing out 103,431 yuan through sales.
The court found that Zhang Peng's actions constituted theft with the intent of illegal possession, secretly stealing the platform's assets, and thus constituted the crime of theft. Ultimately, the court sentenced Zhang Peng to three years and six months in prison and imposed a fine of 10,000 yuan.
Summary Comparison:
The above cases illustrate that in traditional financial markets, when trading prices deviate severely from reasonable ranges due to system failures, operational errors, or extreme market fluctuations, exchanges typically cancel, adjust, or roll back abnormal trades based on clear rules. These measures aim to correct market disorder, maintain trading fairness, and prevent a single event from triggering systemic chain reactions.
In the recent VOXEL contract anomaly incident, Bitget implemented measures including trade rollbacks, freezing abnormal accounts, and recovering improper profits. These handling methods reflect a certain degree of similarity to the logic of addressing extreme trading anomalies in traditional financial markets, but the risk characteristics of the cryptocurrency sector also remind platforms that there is still room for improvement in preemptive risk control.
## V. Rational Summary: Insights on Risk Response and Institutional Development for Cryptocurrency Trading Platforms
Bitget's handling of the VOXEL contract trading anomaly incident exposed deficiencies in system stability and risk control mechanisms. The platform failed to trigger protective measures in a timely manner when trading depth was lost and the market-making system was abnormal, directly leading to severe price distortions and the emergence of arbitrage opportunities.
After the incident, Bitget took a series of response measures, including trade rollbacks, account freezes, and user airdrops, striving to restore order amid the chaos. These actions somewhat alleviated the impact of the anomalies and reflected both the platform's experience and shortcomings in crisis management.
Looking back at similar cases in traditional financial markets, it is evident that the cancellation or rollback of trades in abnormal situations is invariably aimed at safeguarding the basic order and fairness principles of the market. Bitget's handling of this incident, to some extent, continues this risk response logic.
However, the VOXEL incident also left its own mark on the cryptocurrency industry. The "lawyer letter storm" involving Bitget will undoubtedly become an important footnote in the history of the cryptocurrency space, as it touches on the clash between technical vulnerabilities and human greed, as well as the deeper collision of legal boundaries and industry culture.
In this incident, simply taking sides is meaningless.
What is truly worth contemplating is how trading platforms can uphold safety standards during expansion, how arbitrageurs can pursue profits without crossing legal boundaries, and how the entire industry can grow through repeated shocks and repairs.
Perhaps more important than the incident itself is how we choose to face the future.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
