Bitcoin (BTC) Registers Strong Pullback from $23,500 As Whales Short Heavily

After a wild run all the way to above $23,500 levels, Bitcoin (BTC) registered a strong pullback as short order pile up heavily. In less than 15 minutes, Bitcoin (BTC) has lost $1000 of its price from its new all-time high of $23,586. At press time, Bitcoin is trading at $22,441 levels with a market cap of $430 billion.

Twitter handle WhaleTrades has released multiple updates that show several million-dollars worth of Bitcoin (BTC) have been short recently.

????????$4,516,299 $BTC SHORTED @$22581.5 [17/12/20 09:39:53]
????FTX | BTC-PERP

????️When 7 btc = 1 zec? – kdotzz38

— WhaleTrades ???? (@WhaleTrades) December 17, 2020

There has been an overwhelming number of short positions while a few long positions have also build up during this recent rally. Soon after, Bitcoin moves past $20,000 there have been huge liquidations in the last 24 hours. As CoinGape reported, Bitcoin whales have been coming in huge numbers and making huge deposits at the exchanges.

It looks like whales have started liquidating their holdings as Bitcoin profit-booking sweeps in. Over the last 24 hours, the Bitcoin price surged more than 20% going all the way up to $23,500. But during the same time, nearly 78,156 traders have liquidated their holdings.

Over $1.21 Billion Worth BTC Has Been Liquidated

As per data by Bybt.com, nearly $1.37 billion has been liquidated in the last 24 hours in the overall crypto market. Of this, $1.21 Billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC) alone has been liquidated. Interestingly, nearly 25% of this i.e. $228 million has been liquidated only in the last 24 hours.

The largest single liquidation has happened on the BitMex exchange for the value of $10 million. However, despite the massive shorts, Bitcoin (BTC) is still 17% up and continued to hold up around $22,700 levels.

The 24-hour trading volumes have surged to a whopping $65.2 billion. What’s holding up Bitcoin is the flood of institutional news coming over the last 24 hours. Several secret institutional whales have emerged who had invested massively in BTC during the November bull run. Just within the last 24 hours, three big giants – Ruffer LLC, CI Financial, and One River Digital – revealed their major Bitcoin (BTC) investments.

On late Wednesday, Guggenheim’s chief investment officer Scott Minerd noted that BTC can surge all the way up to $400,000 on the back of inflationary pressures and massive money printing by central banks.