BTC price hits $60,000
2 min readTL;DR Breakdown
- BTC price hits above the $60,000 price mark.
- Binance took on the greatest hit as 49% of short positions was liquidated.
- Other crypto exchanges recorded huge losses as well.
BTC price rises to a new ATH
The year started out on a bullish note for the crypto market with BTC making successive ATHs while other altcoins followed suit. However, the bears jumped in after a while to truncate the rally. Right now, the bulls have once again taken charge by driving BTC price to a new ATH above $60,000. BTC could have hit the new ATH earlier enough but met with some resistance along the way which caused it to stall for a while. Yesterday the price of BTC traded around $58,150, which was just inches away from the previous all-time high of $58,258. However, the price broke above the barrier to reach an intraday high of $60,310.
Today ended on a bad note for the bears as approx. $500 million worth of short positions was liquidated hours after the price surge. The majority of the wipeout came from BTC shorters on the Binance exchange. More than 49% of the short positions got liquidated in just a few hours.
Binance users suffer the greatest loss following the BTC price surge
Binance seems to have suffered more liquidation losses than any other exchange. This can be attributed to the high leverage used by traders on the platform. When the exchange introduced Binance Futures, it allowed traders to use leverage up to 20x, with some going as far as 125x. Other exchanges trailed behind Binance as well, with Huobi recording a 23% loss and Bybit a 12.6% loss. The risks associated with margin trading is why many traders consider it very risky. In summary, higher leverage equates to higher risks.
Right now, BTC is trading around $59,000. The last active resistance zone for the bears was around $57,000 which has turned into support. With the growing interest of institutional investors and traditional firms in BTC, the mainstream audience is starting to embrace cryptocurrency.
