[cvoss]

The UI's prices were/are accurate as far as I can tell. I think the trading was just that unstable. When it opened at 17:20 PST, the price was indeed ~$3.5k, then shot up and down violently until they pulled the plug three minutes later at ~$9.5k.

[massaman_yams]

First trades started at 3100.

https://api.gdax.com/products/bch-usd/trades?after=50

[kbody]

They screwed it up badly. If you checked BTC/BCH, there were open orders buying 1 BCH for 3 BTC, which is totally ridiculous. Obviously there was some effort on pumping it a lot.

Coinbase basically did one of the most basic mistakes for new markets (or any newly-online market), to not allow orderbooks to be filled before trades can take place. And so people took advantage of it. I just hope inexperienced people didn't get caught in the middle of it.

[Atheros]

That's ludicrous. Do people not know what a limit order is? Do I walk into a car dealership and say, "Please sell me a car now. Here are all my personal and banking details. There is no price limit." What do you think is going to happen? How is this idiocy the exchange's fault?

[makomk]

Yeah, based on the screenshots I've seen people posting the effective bid-ask spread for anything beyond the most miniscule of transactions was $6000 when they pulled the plug, with almost all of the buy orders at around $3000, almost all of the sell orders at around $9000, and a very thin orderbook in-between the two. What a mess.