Monday’s trading session introduced a fresh wave of renewed optimism as Bitcoin’s price hit a 5-day high before pulling back. The cryptocurrency saw a sudden 5% increase which caused a massive liquidation of short positions on Bitcoin margin trading exchange BitMEX.
A few short hours ago, Bitcoin’s price spiked upwards of 5 percent, reaching around $10,510. This was the highest it had been in the past five days, as Monday’s trading session sparked a fresh wave of renewed optimism throughout the entire market.
Naturally, the move also gave momentum to some of the major large-cap altcoins such as ETH, XRP, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and BNB. Most notably, BNB increased by around 3 percent over the same period.
However, it didn’t take long for Bitcoin to retrace as well. In the hours following the sudden leg up, the cryptocurrency lost about half of its latest gains. At the time of this writing, the cryptocurrency is trading around $10,300, which marks an increase of around 2.5 percent over the past 24 hours.
A sudden move with such velocity in any direction is likely to cause the liquidation of a lot of open positions. In this case, short positions at Bitcoin margin trading exchange BitMEX got obliterated.
As seen on the chart, approximately $52 million worth of shorts were liquidated on BitMEX following Bitcoin’s notable leg up.
The decline which followed, although not as rapid as the move up, caused a lot of long positions to be liquidated as well.
Margin trading involves a significant amount of risk, and even though it could help you increase your profits, it should be used very carefully.
