Bitcoin shorts squeezed as BTC breaks towards $24K

Bitcoin (BTC/USD) rose on Wednesday to continue the rebound that has seen bulls rally above key resistance at $23,000. The flagship cryptocurrency currently trades around $23,780, up more than 7% in the past 24 hours and with an intraday high of $23,896.

Weekly gains stand around 24%, and has seen traders short squeezed as more than $165 million short liquidations are recorded in the past 24 hours. The shorts rekt in this period represent nearly 54% of total liquidations – over $68 million are in BTC shorts.

On Monday, more than $420 million in short liquidations occurred as Bitcoin price jumped above the $22k level. And as sentiment improved amid the short squeeze, open interest in perpetual futures has shot up nearly 8%. The result is a scramble to cover short positions, a scenario that’s helping push BTC prices higher.

What are analysts saying?

Ki Young Ju, the CEO of on-chain analytics platform CryptoQuant, recently pointed to the same “short BTC punts” in 2020, where many were liquidated as a parabolic rally ensued.

But crypto analyst Ali Martinez says that while BTC could look to test resistance around $25k, the market setup doesn’t look good to him. He points to the massive OI over the past week, but which has come amid lack of movement in new addresses.

Some whales holding more than 1K BTC have also “left the network.”

For a bearish outlook, analyst il Capo says a break below $22k is likely to open up potential retest of sub-$20k levels. He is looking at lows of $15.8k-$16.2k if that happens.

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