Bitcoin's $59K Surge Leads To $71M In Short Squeezes—Here's What's Happening

Bitcoin BTC/USD on Wednesday morning saw its value surge to $59,000, fueled by enthusiastic market sentiment, substantial institutional investment, and anticipated gains from the upcoming ‘halving’ event.

What Happened: The last instance when Bitcoin exceeded the $59,000 mark was on October 28, 2021. 

At the time of writing, BTC was trading at $59,176.

This comes as BTC halving, which is a scheduled reduction in the mining reward that takes place approximately every four years. The crypto community is closely watching the countdown to the next halving, which is predicted for mid-April.

Trading activity for Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) has also been notably high, with a total of $2 billion traded on Tuesday alone. BlackRock’s IBIT experienced more than $1.3 billion in daily trading volume for two consecutive days.

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Why It Matters: Over 81,157 traders have experienced ‘liquidation’ in the last 24 hours. The total value of these liquidations amounted to $243.06 million, with the largest order on the Bitmex platform being an XBT-USD transaction valued at $8.34 million.

Coinglass, a data provider, reports high liquidation rates among exchanges, indicating that short sellers—in other words, those betting against the price of Bitcoin—are represented with rates exceeding 57%.

Bitcoin saw liquidations totaling $99.64 million, split into $28.05 million long and $71.59 million short, indicating that shorts dominate at a rate of 71.85%. Ethereum ETH/USD saw total liquidations of $34.29 million with longs at $10.37 million and shorts at $23.92 million, featuring a short rate of 69.76%.

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Price Action: At the time of writing, SHIB was trading at $0.000010 up 5.22% in the last 24 hours, according to Benzinga Pro.