Bitcoin is back up again—and those betting on the price of the asset going down are hurting.
In the past 24 hours, nearly $100 million in short positions for all cryptocurrencies have been liquidated, CoinGlass data shows, with the current tally sitting just over $99 million.
Most of that figure was betting on the biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, with liquidations of short BTC positions now at nearly $36 million in 24 hours. In the past four hours alone, nearly $22 million in BTC shorts have evaporated.
Long positions have also seen losses over the past day, though traders behind shorts are feeling more pain. According to CoinGlass data, about $44 million worth of long positions have been liquidated across all cryptocurrencies in the past 24 hours.
Short positions are held by traders who bet the price of an asset going down in the future. If a short is liquidated, then the trader has lost the bet and their position is closed. Conversely, long positions are bets that the price of an asset will increase.
The price of Bitcoin is up about 5% in the past 24 hours, trading for $61,911, according to CoinGecko. It briefly popped above the $62,000 mark on Friday morning. The asset had been struggling in recent days, and at one point this week dropped below $57,000 per coin.
That's well below Bitcoin's new March all-time high of nearly $74,000. It's even lower than its previous 2021 record of $69,044.
Bitcoin and the wider crypto market have been hurting after the Federal Reserve hinted that it was in no hurry to slash interest rates this week.
Other geopolitical factors, like conflict in the Middle East, have also made "risk-on" assets like Bitcoin less attractive to investors, leading to outflows from the newly approved spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
But today, the U.S. government’s Nonfarm Payrolls report showed that the unemployment rate for April was was higher than expected.
This was interpreted by some crypto traders as bullish: high unemployment makes it more likely that the Fed will consider lowering interest rates, and lower interest rates mean crypto is likely to be more attractive to investors.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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