Bitcoin’s price increased above the $44,000 mark on Thursday, triggering a spike in short liquidations.
The rebound comes as data from Bloomberg Intelligence shows that BlackRock’s (BLK) spot bitcoin exchange traded fund (ETF) has now made it into the top five of this financial asset class in terms of year-to-date flows.
In a recent post on X.com, Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas described the performance of BlackRock’s spot bitcoin ETF, which goes by the $IBIT ticker, since it’s launch in January.
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“$IBIT is now in the top five in YTD flows, which means it’s taken in more cash than 99.98% of ETFs. Not bad for 17 days old,” Balchunas said in a post.
A spot bitcoin ETF is a type of investment fund that allows investors to buy shares representing ownership in actual bitcoin, providing a way to gain exposure to the cryptocurrency’s price movements without directly owning the digital assets.
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According to Coingecko data, the largest digital asset by market capitalisation (BTC-USD) has posted an increase of over 4% in the last 24 hours and is now changing hands for $44,600.
Bitcoin liquidations rise
The recent upswing in prices has prompted a significant liquidation of short positions on cryptocurrency exchanges. The volatility has led to the liquidation of more than $44m in bitcoin positions over the past 24 hours, with the majority, over $41m, consisting of short positions.
According to CoinGlass data, the overall crypto market witnessed the liquidation of over $88m in short positions in the past 24 hours. This contributed to over $106m in total liquidations across major cryptocurrency exchanges.
According to Coinglass, within the last 24 hours 32,643 traders experienced liquidation. OKX, Binance and Huobi were some of the cryptocurrency exchanges that experienced the most liquidations.
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Liquidations tend to occur during volatile price swings such as unexpected downturns. When prices rise sharply, as recently observed in the cryptocurrency market, many traders may be compelled to liquidate their short positions due to the surge in asset values. This can intensify overall market volatility, setting off a cascade effect and potentially causing a significant increase in price fluctuations.
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