Big ‘Short Liquidation’ Sends Bitcoin Back Into The Green For The Year

For the first time since January 2nd, bitcoin is trading higher on the year as the world’s largest cryptocurrency surged over 5% over the weekend, breaking back above $47,000…

This is a 38.2% retracement of the drop from November’s record highs and notably pushes bitcoin back near its 200DMA at around $48,700…

Rick Bensignor, the president of Bensignor Investment Strategies, said in a note Sunday that Bitcoin is “on the verge of a 20% run higher.”

“As we test the top of the 2022 trading range for the fifth time, this is another one of these Bitcoin moments when the narrative could swiftly change and investors pile in, propelling the Bitcoin price higher,” said Antoni Trenchev, co-founder and managing partner at Nexo.

“It might just be time to awaken from the Bitcoin-sideways slumber that’s been 2022.”

One of the bigger drivers of this most recent surge in cryptos is a major short-liquidation (around $140 million) in bitcoin, according to data pulled from CoinGlass, an aggregator that gathers liquidation data from across the market…

Additionally, shorts have liquidated around $120 million in Ethereum over the last few days…

Very recently, Ethereum has actually outperformed Bitcoin. The outperformance has occurred since Ethereum 2.0’s first test of its Proof-of-Stake transformation was successful…

As OneRiver recently noted, investors are voting with their (digital) wallets.

The successful start of the Merge has increased demand to stake ether (ETH). After the launch of public testing, ether staked on March 15 jumped by the second-highest one-day volume ever. Since then, the pace of staking is the strongest since the initial introduction of the Beacon Chain…

Total ether staked is more than 2,000% the target needed to start the process as first determined in November 2021 (here). And the percent of ether staked is still relatively low at 11% compared to 56% for the other top five staking protocols. There is pent-up demand for ether.

Finally, it is worth noting that on this day in 2013, Bitcoin’s market cap topped $1 billion for the first time (as @TickerHistory notes, it hit the milestone at ~$92 per Bitcoin as there were only around 11M Bitcoin in existence at the time) and today bitcoin is back above $900 billion market cap…

And total crypto market cap is back above $2 trillion once again.

Some have argued that the renewed optimism for cryptocurrencies followed comments by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who said in a March 25 interview with CNBC that despite her own skepticism about the asset class, “there are benefits from crypto and we recognize that innovation in the payment system can be a healthy thing”.

In other news, El Salvador has continued its push toward Bitcoin mass adoption with its “volcano bonds” which, while delayed, are still being planned for the country. El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele told his 3.6 million Twitter followers last week to invest in the volcano bonds to “make the world that bit harder to police.”

And let’s not forget Ukraine’s official legalization of cryptocurrency and continued acceptance of donations (more than $100 million to date) in the form of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Polkadot, and Dogecoin.