It was a bad day for bears as Bitcoin rallied to a seven-month high, triggering large-scale liquidations.
Posted October 29, 2024 at 4:00 am EST.
Bitcoin blew past the $71,000 mark on Monday, rallying 5% to a level last seen in March, when the digital currency traded at an all-time high.
The price movement triggered a wave of liquidations on major crypto exchanges, hitting short sellers the hardest.
Data from CoinGlass show that a total of $238 million was liquidated in the 24 hours before press time, of which $176 million came from short positions alone.
Bitcoin traders saw $35.5 million liquidated almost exclusively from short positions.
It was a similar story for Ethereum traders, who recorded $11.95 million in total liquidations.
Liquidations occur when a trader’s leveraged position is forcibly closed by an exchange due to insufficient margin or collateral. Binance accounted for more than half of all liquidations across exchanges.
According to CryptoQuant analyst Mignolet, bitcoin’s price action is currently being driven by Binance whales that boosted their trading activity two weeks ago.
In a Quicktake published late on Sunday, Mignolet noted that a decline in the Coinbase Premium Gap was a clear indication of whale intervention.
U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were likely another big contributor to the positive price action.
CoinShares found that close to $1 billion flowed into bitcoin ETFs last week, pushing year-to-date inflows into all digital asset investments to $27 billion, nearly triple the record in 2021.
“U.S. political factors” were also a probable driving force behind the recent spate of inflows, said James Butterfill, head of research at CoinShares.
As the U.S. presidential election approaches, decentralized betting markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket indicate that the odds of a Donald Trump victory are currently higher than those of Kamala Harris winning the Oval Office.
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