Elon Musk-Prompted Bitcoin Price Surge Causes $387M in Shorts to Liquidate

[Cordillerabit]

For Elon Musk, whose hatred for short-sellers blazes hot enough to reforge Mjölnir a dozen times over, after the Tesla CEO changed his Twitter bio to "Bitcoin," the millions in losses suffered by shorts must make it feel like Christmas and his birthday rolled into one.

Bitcoin's price spiked to a 10-day high of $38,020 and sparked short liquidations worth $387 million on major exchanges including Binance, Bitfinex, BitMEX, ByBit, Deribit, FTX, HuobiDM and OKEx.

At press time, the crypto market leader is trading at $37,390, representing a gain of over 15% from the low of $32,000 seen during the European morning session.

Today's short liquidation is the largest since Jan. 2, when, according to data provider Coinalyze, exchanges closed $575 million worth of shorts.

When the price moves above a predetermined threshold, forced closure of short positions occurs, signaling the liquidation engine to "square off," or close, the positions. A huge short squeeze such as this often puts upward price pressure, leading to a bullish move.

Source: Bityard