Source: Adobe/Michael Nivelet
The price of Bitcoin (BTC) reached as high as $55,500 on the market today after breaking through a key resistance level on the chart at around $52,700 for the first time since May. The increase also brought the number one cryptocurrency’s market capitalization above the psychologically significant USD 1trn mark.
At press time (14:37 UTC), BTC was trading at 54,239, slightly less than its high above USD 55,000 reached today. The price has risen by 24% in the last 9 hours, making it one of the best performers in the crypto market today.
BTC PRICE Chart:
The sharp rise in the price of Bitcoin also led to a significant increase in liquidated Bitcoin short positions, as data from showed. In the last 4 hours, Bitcoin shorts worth almost USD 151m have been liquidated on all major exchanges, which is a sharp increase from USD 4.3M in shorts liquidated in the previous 4 hours.
However, according to the CEO of CryptoQuant, Ki Young Ju, today’s price jump could have more to do with increased buying pressure than just a cascade of liquidations. The CEO said that his data shows that someone bought USD 1.6BN worth of BTC over market orders in just five minutes today.
Also today, Soros Fund Management, owned by billionaire George Soros, confirmed at a Bloomberg summit that the fund has invested in BTC.
“From our perspective, we own some coins, not much, and the coins themselves are less interesting than the use cases of DeFi and the like,” said Dawn Fitzpatrick, CEO and chief investment officer.
The rise in the price of Bitcoin was also followed by a more modest rise for other major cryptoassets, for example Ethereum (ETH) rose 3% in the last 24 hours, and Cardano (ADA) trimmed its losses from earlier today by, in the end, only 1% in the last 24 hours.