Consolidation is when you take lots of individual small amounts of BTC and turn it into a single BTC transaction (called a UTXO - Unspent Transaction Output). 

As fees are charged against individual amounts, when mining fees are low, you can consolidate your BTC into a single transaction output, so that when fees are high, spending BTC is cheaper in fees.

However, a user on Xitter suggested that an employee at the OKX exchange fucked up and started consolidating and then flooded the network with transactions each out bidding the previous transaction in fees, bumping fees into the $50 range, meaning that his consolidations were costing about a third of the value in fees. 

 L
O
L 

 maybe the okx guys are consolidating their friendship with miners 

 That is also another theory 😂  

 That was a different event, the OTC sale of Bitcoin to Blackrock caused that. ETFs get discount for the volume they buy, driving down the price.

OTC, or Over The Counter is a term used for high value buyers such as ETFs or high net worth individuals or funds. They have accounts and phone up to negotiate their purchases. 

OTC is only available for buys over about $500K and typically is for buyers in the multi million dollar bracket. 

ETFs are spending hundreds of millions, so can negotiate bigger discounts. 

 I know, it's counter intuitive, but makes sense when you understand. 

 Agreed, also potentially insider trading, but that's a whole different subject.

That's one of the two main reasons we all hate Brian Armstrong of CoinBase.

The other is he turns off his servers when the price does start pumping 😂