First Mover Americas: Bitcoin, Ether Surge on Short Squeeze

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Price Point

Bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) witnessed large gains over the last 24 hours as a short squeeze took place. Bitcoin was up 6% on the day and ether was up 15%, according to CoinDesk data.

The crypto market saw the largest short liquidations (bets against price rises) since July 2021, with traders taking huge losses as the price moved upward.

Crypto exchange FTX recorded $745 million worth of short liquidations for all coins over the last 24 hours, according to data from coinalyze. There was a total of $908 million short liquidations across all exchanges over the last 24 hours.

Prices will most likely jump again, according to Laurent Kssis, crypto trading adviser at CEC Capital. “Maybe not as solid as this one though,” he said. “But between these exchanges it will inevitably push BTC up and the rest of the crypto market.”

Bitcoin-tracked futures saw $468.6 million in short liquidations, according to data from coinalyze.

The price of bitcoin was hovering at around t$20,700 at the time of writing. This is the first time bitcoin has traded above $20,000 since the first week of October. Ether was recently trading at around $1,550.

“I still remain bearish in the short term, as we still need to have more visibility on signs that indicate that inflation is cooling down,” said Pablo Jodar, a crypto analyst at GenTwo, a digital-asset management firm.

“After yesterday’s Alphabet earnings release, futures are already down,” he said. “I won’t be surprised if bitcoin goes down back to $19,000 in the following days.”

In traditional markets, Nasdaq futures fell more than 1.5% after disappointing quarterly earnings reports from Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet, and S&P 500 futures were down about 0.8%.

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