Bitcoin Shatters Records—$453 Million Short Squeeze Obliterates Crypto Bears

Bitcoin just napalmed the bears—again. The king of crypto punched through its all-time high with a $453 million short squeeze that left skeptics licking their wounds. No mercy in these digital streets.

Blood in the derivatives market

Leveraged shorts got steamrolled as BTC's relentless rally triggered cascading liquidations. The market's message? 'Bet against me at your peril.' Traders who thought the top was in now face margin calls instead of margaritas.

Wall Street's FOMO machine revs up

Traditional finance dinosaurs are suddenly scrambling to justify their 'digital tulips' rhetoric while quietly accumulating positions. Nothing brings out institutional hypocrisy like double-digit returns before lunch.

The closer: Crypto winters are getting shorter—and the burns are getting hotter. Maybe time to retire that 'this time it's different' bear thesis?

Bitcoin Has Rallied To A New Price Record

After prolonged consolidation just under the ATH, Bitcoin has finally broken through to set a new record. Although brief, BTC’s move saw it touch the $112,000 mark.

Below is a chart that shows how the asset’s recent performance has been like:

As is visible in the graph, bitcoin has seen a small retracement to $111,000 since the ATH-setting surge. In typical fashion, this move from the original digital asset has sent a bullish wave across the sector, with altcoins observing jumps of their own.

Many of them have outperformed BTC, including ethereum (ETH), which has seen a profit of around 4.5% during the past day. A notable performer among the top coins has been Sui (SUI), observing a rise of over 9% in this window.

With the bullish price action in the sector, the investors betting on a bearish outcome over at the derivatives side have naturally been dealt a blow.

Crypto Market Liquidations Have Crossed $500 Million

According to data from CoinGlass, the derivatives exchanges have registered significant liquidations over the last 24 hours. Below is a table showcasing the relevant numbers.

In total, the cryptocurrency market as a whole has faced liquidations of almost $528 million in this period. Out of these, $453 million in liquidations, representing 85% of the total, came from the short investors alone.

In terms of the individual symbols, Bitcoin and Ethereum contributed the most toward the squeeze, with $225 million and $148 million in liquidations, respectively.

Mass liquidation events like this latest one aren’t a particularly rare sight in the cryptocurrency sector, due to coins being relatively volatile and extreme amounts of leverage being easily accessible.

There have been a couple of major short squeezes during the last few weeks alone. According to the analytics firm Glassnode, however, the latest event has seen different behavior in the Open Interest. The “Open Interest” is an indicator that keeps track of the total amount of positions related to Bitcoin that are currently open on all centralized derivatives platforms.

When mass liquidation events happen, it’s not unusual to see the Open Interest drop as investors get liquidated or exit the market. This happened with the last two short squeezes and also the latest one.

It’s apparent from the chart, though, that while Open Interest remained down after the previous rallies, it quickly bounced back up following the initial drop during the latest one. This trend could point toward fresh long positioning occurring in the sector.