The price of bitcoin has risen by $1,000 in just 20 minutes, sending it above $10,000. It is now sitting at $10,374, at the time of writing.
As a result, many traders were liquidated on crypto leverage trading platform BitMEX. According to Datamish, a crypto analytics company, nearly $58 million in bitcoin short positions on the platform were liquidated during the bitcoin pump. In contrast, just $20 million in long positions were liquidated a few hours earlier when the price was sliding downhill.
According to Bitcoinity, a market watching website, there was a big spike in trading volume during this price rise. More than 3,900 bitcoin was traded in one minute at 15:36, mostly in USD, worth $37 million across the crypto exchanges it accesses. To put this in perspective, just ten minutes earlier, less than 100 bitcoin was switching hands per minute. The reason? Take your pick: A whale offloading currency? Tether begins printing Tethers? Bitcoin talked about in the Senate? Mike Dudas telling his following to buy bitcoin? Who knows.
What we do know is The Block’s Mike Dudas tweeted this morning that he believes the price of bitcoin is primed to go up, and recommended to his followers that they buy bitcoin. At the time, the price was just $9,700.
Forget the McAfee effect—or the Coinbase effect—is it time for the Dudas effect?