Bitcoin: This group flees despite BTC’s $60K surge – What do they know?

• Bitcoin’s price uptick contrasted with traders closing positions, indicating market caution.
• Analysis suggested a short-term surge to $65K before a potential downtrend.

Bitcoin’s [BTC] market performance has recently shown a notable uptick, with a 2.8% increase in the past 24 hours and a 6.8% rise over the week, pushing its price to hover above the $63,000 mark. 

This upward movement in price comes amidst various market activities that suggest a more complex scenario than a straightforward bullish trend.

Bitcoin: Strategic movements

Despite the positive price action, deeper market analysis revealed significant behavior changes among traders.

Axel Adler Jr, an analyst on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), utilizing CryptoQuant data, has observed that leveraged traders on perpetual trading platforms like Binance [BNB] are increasingly closing their positions. 

This trend was highlighted by a -20% monthly change in Open Interest, indicating a cautious approach where more traders are opting to close positions to wait and see how prices will evolve.

Source: Axel Adler Jr/X

This cautious behavior among traders is not necessarily indicative of a bearish outlook for Bitcoin.

Instead, Adler suggested that this contraction in open positions reflected a strategic, cautiously optimistic stance by traders who are not exiting the market but are instead waiting for clearer signals. 

Source: Axel Adler Jr/X

The analyst noted,

“I think the market needs this negativity for short positions to accumulate, which could then be used to push upwards.”

AMBCrypto’s look into Bitcoin’s market sentiment showed that while the king coin was bearish on the daily chart, there might be a short-term upward movement to around the $65,000 level first. 

Source: TradingView

This potential rise could be a strategic play by the market to take out liquidity at higher levels before a more significant downturn, possibly going below the $56,000 region.

What do liquidation patterns suggest?

The market’s current state is also reflected in the liquidation patterns observed.

Data from Coinglass showed that Bitcoin short traders outnumbered long traders at press time, with cumulative short liquidations standing at $2.16 billion, compared to $984.31 million in long liquidations.

Source: Coinglass

This imbalance showed a prevailing expectation of further price drops among a substantial portion of market participants.

AMBCrypto’s look at Glassnode also added context to this sentiment, which noted that Bitcoin has so far recorded a 20.3% correction from its all-time high of $73,000.

Read Bitcoin’s [BTC] Price Prediction 2024-25  

This correction is the deepest on a closing basis since the lows following the FTX crisis in November 2022. 

Source: Glassnode

However, Glassnode pointed out that the current macro uptrend remained resilient, with shallower corrections than in previous cycles, indicating underlying market strength despite short-term fluctuations.