Bitcoin[BTC] comfortably pushed past $65,000 during the day’s trading session. However, this was at the cost of heavy losses, especially for traders that expected it to pivot in the $64,000 price range.
Some traders expected Bitcoin to go through another retracement at or near the $65,000 level.
After all, BTC has been rallying since the second week of September and profit-taking would likely manifest.
Such expectations led to the explosion of short positions, which in turn got them short-handed as prices continued to rally.
Hyblock Capital data demonstrates spikes in short positions in the past three days. This was no coincidence, since Bitcoin bulls showed signs of declining momentum between the 20th of September and the 23rd of September.
Some may have seen this as a sign that the bears would likely take over.
There was a large spike in net shorts on Binance on the 23rd of September, followed by a spike in shorts liquidations.
Another spike occurred the following day, but there were fewer liquidations.
Finally, AMBCrypto observed another short spike on the 26th of September, followed by a large uptick in liquidations.
Source: Hyblock Capital
The Bitcoin liquidations during yesterday’s trading session occurred after the price unexpectedly went in the opposite direction. This left shorts exposed, thus the liquidations.
This was in line with a previous observation which revealed that long-term holders were not taking profits and miner reserves were growing.
Assessing Bitcoin exposure to leverage
The shorts may have been heavily leveraged, thus liquidations triggered a short-squeeze situation.
CryptoQuant data revealed that the estimated leverage ratio bounced back sharply after its dip in August.
The last time that Bitcoin’s estimated leverage ratio was that high was in October 2023.
Source: CryptoQuant
CryptoQuant’s short liquidations metric revealed that the number of shorts liquidated in the last 24 hours was up by 591%.
Liquidations amounted to roughly 635 shorts during this period. This pales in comparison to the number of shorts liquidated on the 20th of September, which peaked at 12,118.
The short-squeeze and subsequent liquidations underscore Bitcoin’s current level of exposure and sensitivity to leverage. As far as BTC price is concerned, the cryptocurrency could still be subject to potential downside.
However, it will likely be limited if most long-term holders continue to HOLD.