Bitcoin is trying to maintain the level of $50,000, after the rapid gains recorded yesterday, which took it to the highest levels that we have not seen since late 2021.
While this rise led to gains for cryptocurrencies, as Ethereum recorded the highest daily close since April of the year 2022, the highest level of $2,660.
Bitcoin’s gains came as outflows from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) continued to decline, with more flows heading into new spot ETFs.
GBTC recorded the lowest outflows since its transformation into a spot ETF, with about $52 million yesterday.
Last week, the new ETFs recorded net flows of more than $1.1 billion, thus recording net inflows of $2.8 billion since the launch about a month ago, according to data provided by CoinShares.
The gains in the crypto market led to the launch of a large wave of liquidation of short positions. According to data provided by CoinGlass, the equivalent of $134 million worth of short positions were liquidated yesterday, which is the highest in more than a month, while Bitcoin had the largest share, with a value of more than $60 million worth of positions.
In contrast, only about $65 million, with $20 million for Bitcoin alone, were liquidated from long positions, even with yesterday’s record gains. While I believe that these liquidated long positions, whether profit-taking or stop losses of short positions, are relatively small given what we have witnessed over the past two months when Bitcoin tried to breach even lower levels.
It seems that bulls today are more committed to their positions, with the outflows from GBTC calming down and gradually heading maybe towards zero, which was one of the most prominent obstacles to further progress since the launch of the spot ETFs.
This is what we will continue to monitor over the coming weeks, as the focus gradually shifts towards the halving event expected during the second quarter.
We are also about to execute $890 million worth of Bitcoin options, with a call option ratio of 0.8 to put options, while $87 million worth of call options have an execution price of $50,000 per Bitcoin, according to Deribit.