Bitcoin was still trading higher on Tuesday morning after surging past $56,000 on Monday night.
BTC was trading at $56,607.57 early Tuesday morning. Bitcoin prices are up 11% in the past day and up 33% since last month, according to CoinGeco data. And in the past day alone, $278 million worth of Bitcoin short positions were liquidated.
When a short position is liquidated, this means that the trader is forced to liquidate the short position by the broker or exchange. This typically occurs when the value of the asset being sold increases to the point where the trader’s losses approach or exceed the margin posted as collateral.
Essentially, a broker or exchange closes a position to prevent a trader from falling into debt that they cannot repay and to protect the brokerage from potential losses that could affect its financial health and the safety of other traders’ assets.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin open interest has increased to $25 billion, according to CoinGlass. On the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) alone, open interest reached an all-time high of $7.8 billion. Binance is not far behind with $6 billion worth of open interest on Bitcoin contracts.
Open interest refers to the total number of outstanding derivatives contracts, such as futures and options, that have not yet been settled or closed. Open interest is often used as an indicator of market sentiment. Traders open long positions when they are optimistic and sell positions when they think the price of an asset will fall.
High open interest also means more activity and liquidity, which means it is easier for traders to enter and exit positions without significantly impacting the BTC price.
But does this mean we are in a bull market? That may not be the case, according to Glassnode senior analyst James Check.
“This time, short sellers continued to bet on the prevailing uptrend and were liquidated as a result,” he wrote. on. “When a true bull market peaks, leveraged long positions disappear.”
Nonetheless, there has rarely been a day in Bitcoin history when BTC closed at a higher price than last night, the Glassnode main account noted. on.
Yesterday, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF saw a record $1.3 billion worth of inflows. This means the fund currently has $6.6 billion in assets under management. As of this writing, the newly approved U.S. Bitcoin ETF is now worth just under $40 billion worth of Bitcoin.