Crypto Traders Turn Against Each Other in a Collapsing Market

With crypto prices tumbling precipitously, traders have begun increasingly turning against one another to eke out ever-elusive profits. From a report: Many shark traders scour blockchains -- digital ledgers for recording transactions -- seeking information on other traders, particularly those with highly leveraged positions, an anonymous user known as Omakase, a contributor to the Sushi decentralized exchange, said in an interview. The sharks then attack the positions by trying to push them into liquidation, and earning liquidation bonuses that are common in decentralized finance (DeFi), where people trade, lend and borrow from each other without intermediaries like banks. Related strategies may have contributed to the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin, with shark traders making money off price arbitrage between the Curve decentralized exchange and centralized exchanges, according to Nansen, a blockchain analytics firm.

Recent troubles at crypto lender Celsius Network were exacerbated by arbitragers as well. The price of stETh token that Celsius has a large position in started trading at a large discount from Ether, to which it's tied. 'As stETH goes down, arbitragers buy stETH and short ETH against it, sending ETH lower, which again lowers collateral values across DeFi,' effectively worsening Celsius's position, according to a recent Arca note. As Omakase put it, 'In a downtrend environment, where yields are harder to access, what we are going to see is some actors utilize some more aggressive strategies, and that may not be necessarily good for the community.' Omakase added: 'The environment has become more player vs player.'

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