lol https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...rally-exerts-pain-as-record-shorts-get-burned The frenzied relationship between Bitcoin and its skeptics is reaching a boiling point. Speculators who bought futures contracts to bet against the largest digital currency are being forced to close out positions by the parabolic rally of the past two months that has more than doubled the price. The squeeze is likely to continue with so-called short interest still lingering at an all-time high. “Higher prices are bringing in more money, more hedging, greater shorts,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mike McGlone. “Elevated shorts like this are indicative of a bid below the market more likely to go higher.” Bets on gains appeared to peak toward the end of last year and has been steadily decreasing over the course of the first quarter as open interest -- or the amount of risk held -- in futures reached the highest since the contracts first began trading in late 2017. The falling net long amount appears to be fueled by an increasing amount of short futures positions, currently sitting at a record high of 4,431 contracts. Although speculators remain net long Bitcoin futures, the recent rise in new short positions -- which has pushed higher open interest -- may have created a fresh wave of short covering demand. “It’s a clear sign that the price was going to knock them out,” said Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst at Think Markets UK in London. “Now the momentum is immensely strong and we do think that the price is highly likely to touch the level of $15,000 in the next couple of weeks.” Bitcoin’s frenzied run is starting to look more like it did at the height of crypto mania in 2017. It rose as much as 14% on Wednesday, breaching above $12,900 for the first time since January 2018. Alternative coins, including Ether and Litecoin, also gained, and the Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index jumped as much as 10.3%. News that Facebook Inc. plans to unveil its own cryptocurrency in conjunction with a broad group of partners including Visa Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc. sent prices higher, as did reports that Bitmain Technologies Ltd., the world’s biggest producer of cryptocurrency mining chips, is preparing an initial public offering. “Bitcoin is very much in the driver’s seat of the crypto market right now,” wrote Mati Greenspan, senior market analyst at trading platform eToro, in a recent note. “After the prolonged crypto winter that was 2018, this year has seen the crypto market as the best performing asset class of 2019 by far, and that was just Spring.”
As a HDLR of a near token amount of BTC, I'm laughing hard at the shorts and "Bitcoin is going to zero soon!" crowd...even though I'm not going to make a huge amount even if it triples from here.
I sold my bitcoin today when it was at $13,600. Not sure if it was the right decision, but everyone seems to think that bitcoin is going to just keep repeating these historical patterns and when the average person thinks the market is going one way, it usually doesn't.
Who on earth takes CME data to prove a point? CME just a fraction of the derivatives markets volume. Also, Libra has nothing to do with it. Why would anybody buy BTC because of Zucc Coin? The one has nothing to do with the other. This entire piece is ridiculous
My simplistic view of the market situation and could be completely wrong or partially right. The Zucc coin was for sensationalism, but cryptos universe would welcome a successful Libra coin as it brings market adoption and does not compete with bitcoin on the SOV function as it's a stablecoin, but it does compete on the payment function. Nevertheless, Libra coin would help the bitcoin ecosystem as another method for spending bitcoin in as many merchants that accept it worldwide (as Libra gets gets listed on Binance or other cryptocurrencies exchanges). On the CME futures situation, here's what I've read, the Hedge Funds have been playing the bitcoin futures markets on the short side since last year (2018 bitcoin bear market) to juice their performance, and they go out on Bitmex to defend their positions by dumping to trigger liquidations on the longs positions and change market sentiment. They could possibly be doing this at Coinbase as well but they'll have to be careful as Coinbase is a US regulated exchange so probably not. They were successful the whole year 2018 but what changed late December/January that turned the bear market into a vicious bull market? They got caught with their pants down, as the interest in bitcoin as a legitimate investment asset and SOV has been increasing especially with Institutional Investors and they have not been as successful in defending their short positions causing market spikes. Plus, with ETrade, Ameritrade, ICE Bakkt exchanges coming onboard could be loading up the inventory and causing more demand and shortages of bitcoin supplies available in the markets. Then the Fed signals more liquidity and lower interest rates, the more reason for Institutional Investors to start looking at a way to hedge to a non-correlated asset that is outside of the financial system in case of a full financial crisis. Sources below: https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-there-a-big-short-in-bitcoin-11561464005 "recent studies suggest that the size of the bitcoin spot market is inflated because of rampant fake trading at cryptocurrency exchanges" https://www.forbes.com/sites/billyb...lionaires-are-buying-up-bitcoin/#3226bb27208c
@johnarb: To be very honest, all news pieces that come out of the US media are just useless. Really. The problem is that people use volume numbers from western exchanges to make up reasons for market moves. However, almost 80% of the entire BTC cash market is traded OTC in China so there are no real figures available. The CME Hedgefund myth is just that...a myth. People might be playing on the CME but they are way to small to move anything. Nobody cares about the CME, just like nobody cares about the ADR of Deutsche Bank. Zucc also doesn't matter because it is just another government controlled payment mechanism. If you want to understand the "value" of this entire mess that is called Bitcoin, you have to look at China, capital controls and how OTC dealing is allowed for a few very wealthy individuals. Forget everything that is coming out of the US for the moment. Until someone approves a big ETF...all the news out of the western finance world are just non events. It will take a very long time until crypto adjusts to western standards. In the mean time there is a lot of money to be made.
Title ought to be : Bitcoin's Blowout Rally Provides great pleasure to Shorts & they get away with tons of money. Those who shorted BTC futures on 27 Jun 19, European session must be extremely happy !!! They could have earnt 1800 points (ie $9000) max per lot by day trading. Important thing is to know how to read charts and recognize reversal pattern. I don't trust the news. We need to read news with a pinch of salt and do our own analysis. ________________