- Over $1 billion in crypto short positions were wiped out in the last 24 hours as Bitcoin rushed to a new all-time high of $116,766.86.
- BTC accounted for $572 million in short liquidations within the period.
The Bitcoin (BTC) party is just starting. This is the harsh reality that people betting against the top digital asset faced as the cryptocurrency market just wrecked $1.02 billion in short positions in the last 24 hours heading to Friday morning (UTC).
Bitcoin Rallies to $116,766.86 ATH
It’s been a wild ride for Bitcoin in the past few hours. After breaching the $112K barrier to a $113K top, BTC continued to skyrocket to a new all-time high of $116,766.86. As of writing past 3:00 UTC, the digital asset is not yet showing any signs of slowing down.
As investors flocked to it, Bitcoin’s trading volume jumped by over 70% to $101 billion in 24 hours. Meanwhile, the latest developments elevated the market cap of BTC’s 19.89 million circulating supply to $2.32 trillion, edging closer to overtaking Amazon’s $2.35 trillion overall valuation.
If Bitcoin continues its surge to around $118.15K per coin, it would already make it the fifth-largest asset in the world by market cap. On top of that list is gold, with a $22.46 trillion valuation, followed by NVIDIA at $4 trillion.
Market Takes a Bloodbath From Short Positions
Short traders have recently gotten themselves into a rude awakening. In the last 24 hours, crypto exchanges liquidated around $1.02 billion in short positions. According to CoinGlass, the figures came against only $120 million long positions, most likely from traders already cashing out from BTC’s expected rise to $115K.
Along the way, Bitcoin shed $572 million shorts and $19 million longs. At the same time, crypto exchanges liquidated $203 million shorts and $38 million longs in Ethereum (ETH).
On-chain data revealed that the overall $1.14 billion liquidations in the crypto market from long and short positions affected 238,461 traders. The platform traced the largest single liquidation order on HTX at a BTC-USDT value of $88.55 million.
Bullish Sentiment is Off-the-Roof
As we have previously reported, CryptoQuant’s analysis indicated that only a few are taking their profits from the recent trend. Bitcoin exchange inflows have significantly declined from November last year, when BTC surged to $100K, up to yesterday by around 78%. This was the lowest by far for over a decade. Interestingly, transactions of over 100 BTC considerably dropped to 7K BTC yesterday from November’s 62K BTC.
Wrapping things up, the trend strongly suggests that only a few are willing to sell their Bitcoin holdings amid expectations of further price increases due to rising demand, especially from institutional players.
