$15M in short positions liquidated as Bitcoin surges to $9,800 for first time in weeks

After a few days of consolidation, Bitcoin has experienced a crucial breakout in the past few hours. Just a few minutes ago, Bitcoin reached $9,800, its highest trading price in 10 days. With this rise, the leading cryptocurrency has risen by about 5% in the past 24 hours. At the same time, the surge in Bitcoin prices has also led to the liquidation of positions worth tens of millions of dollars.

In just one hour, $10 million worth of short positions on BitMEX were closed. Since June 22, about $5 million to $7 million worth of Bitcoin short positions have been closed.

BitMEX Bitcoin position closing data

The reason why more open positions were not liquidated is that the pace of liquidation was relatively slow this time.

A higher starting point

Bitcoin’s move to $9,800 is a sign to some that a bigger uptrend is brewing. Microsoft AI/cloud expert Joe McCann wrote in his Telegram channel that a key bull signal is on the horizon.

The signal is a bullish crossover in the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD). A bullish crossover signal in the MACD indicates that Bitcoin is trending upward. Case in point: BTC rose more than 50% in the six weeks after the signal appeared in March this year. Bitcoin's relative strength index (RSI) also indicates that Bitcoin has room to rise.

An anonymous trader noted that the index recently broke out of a symmetrical triangle to the upside. This suggests that an uptrend in Bitcoin may be forming.

Bitcoin daily relative strength index analysis chart

What's behind the rise in Bitcoin prices?

There appears to be a confluence of multiple trends behind Bitcoin’s bull run today. First, the S&P 500 and other financial markets have been boosted. The Nasdaq hit another all-time high despite the ongoing pandemic in the U.S., and Microsoft and Netflix also hit new all-time highs.

The rally came after the Federal Reserve announced last week that they would be buying individual corporate bonds; some saw this as a sign that the Fed might give in and buy individual stocks.

As Xiaotian reported earlier, an analyst observed that Bitcoin has a macro and short-term correlation with the S&P 500. Another good news is that PayPal will allow PayPal and Venmo users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies directly within the app. And PayPal’s boss happens to be Tesla CEO Musk, who is relatively friendly to cryptocurrencies.

“My understanding is that they will allow buying and selling of crypto directly from PayPal and Venmo,” the source told CoinDesk. “They will have some kind of built-in wallet functionality so you can store it there.”