Bitcoin (BTC) Shorts Absorb $152 Million in Liquidations During Rebound

Shorts Forced Out on the Fibonacci Break

Bitcoin (BTC) erased roughly $151.99 million of short positions over 24 hours after the price pushed through the Fibonacci 38.2% retracement, a line drawn from the measured rebound range, at $78,038.4 on rising volume. A short liquidation happens when a leveraged position betting on declines is force-closed because the margin behind it runs out as the price climbs, and the closing itself is a market buy. That mechanism turned one technical break into a cascade: forced buy-backs of bearish bets added demand at the same moment the volume-backed breakout was already lifting the tape. Market data shows the Bitcoin (BTC) price at $80,706 on Thursday, up 5.9% across the day and 0.2% since the liquidation tally was compiled at 03:10 UTC. The move had built through the Asian session. At 11:37 in Korea, or 02:37 UTC, Bitcoin changed hands at 108,541,000 won on Upbit, 0.2% above the prior close, inside a day range of 107,888,000 to 108,903,000 won. Upbit's won market turned over 1,341.34 Bitcoin (BTC) in 24 hours, worth about 142.3 billion won, a reading confined to that single venue rather than global volume. The won quote is local, but its direction matched the dollar market tick for tick through the morning. An earlier snapshot compiled at 00:07 Korean time had put the 24-hour gain at 3.74%, before the dollar-market advance carried the coin past the retracement level entirely. The sequencing is the story: volume confirmed the break of $78,038.4, forced buying followed, and each closed short pushed the price higher still, which is why the liquidation figure reads as a consequence of the breakout rather than a separate event. The squeeze also sits inside a broader session in which total crypto liquidations reached $974.80 million across the wider Bitcoin market.

Our composite scoring of support and resistance frames where the squeeze landed. The spot price sits between a support cluster at $79,730, scored 87 out of 100 where the 20-day and 50-day moving averages converge, and a resistance band at $81,128, scored 73 out of 100. Perpetual funding stands at 0.0067%, mildly positive, and the long/short account ratio reads 1.51, with 60.2% of accounts long against 39.8% short, a count of accounts rather than whale-scale positioning. The setup is a sideways market with leverage tilted toward bets on further upside. A decisive close above the $81,128 band would put the remaining short side under renewed pressure, while losing $79,730 would hand the argument back to dip buyers waiting lower. The full band map sits in our Bitcoin technical analysis.

ETF Outflows Slow After the Midterms

Fund flows through United States spot Bitcoin ETFs gave the squeeze a second leg to stand on. These flow records track net creations and redemptions of fund shares, the cleanest public read on institutional positioning in Bitcoin (BTC). Net outflows from the funds totaled about $116 million on November 3, a steep drop from the roughly $643 million recorded in the session before, per official ETF flow records. The improvement fell short of a reversal: money was still leaving, only more slowly, and the rebound has yet to be confirmed by a return to net inflows. Political risk also eased, with markets digesting the results of the United States midterm elections, a repricing that ran through the midterm rebound framework the market tested when it first neared $81,000. Slowing outflows do not add fresh demand on their own; they only remove a drag that had been pressing on the price through late October. The zone that decides whether the rebound holds was set at $78,000 to $78,600 in dollar terms. With spot now trading above that band, it becomes the first line the market would fall back to test if momentum stalls, and a clean loss of it opens a pullback toward $76,000. The next scheduled variable is the United States employment report due on November 6. The sequence matters for positioning math: a market that stopped bleeding institutional money while its short base was being force-closed has removed both drags at once, a different setup from a squeeze riding on slowing supply alone. What the session leaves standing is the shape of the imbalance itself: the entire $151.99 million liquidation total came from the short side, leaving bearish positioning the lighter party by force of margin calls rather than choice, and whether ETF flows finish flipping to net inflows, alongside Friday's employment report, will decide if that lighter side has to keep covering.