Nearly $900 million in crypto short positions liquidated as BTC breaks $39,000

Crypto short positions worth $883 million have been liquidated over the past 12 hours amid bitcoin's 12% price breakout.

Data from Bybt.com shows that, short positions on bitcoin accounted for 81% of those liquidations, with $720 million liquidated.

The majority of the bitcoin and overall crypto short liquidations happened over the past four hours when bitcoin's price started to see a notable surge.

The price of the world's largest cryptocurrency started to break out around 0:00 UTC time on Monday after trading mostly at the $34,000 level over the weekend. It quickly jumped by over 10% within hours to cross the $39,000 level for the first time since mid-June.

Bitcoin's price reached $39,770 on Coinbase Pro around 1:00 but swiftly dropped to just above $38,000 and has been changing hands around $38,300 for the past four hours.

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Bitcoin's price started to see some uptick last week when Elon Musk said in an online event that not only does Tesla hold bitcoin but SpaceX does too.

On early Sunday Eastern time, U.K publication CityAM said in a report that Amazon is accepting bitcoin as a payment method "by the end of the this year," citing an unnamed insider without any response from Amazon. The internet giant has not responded to The Block's request for comment as of press time.

Business Insider first reported on Saturday that Amazon is looking for a candidate to "develop Amazon's Digital Currency and Blockchain strategy and product roadmap" based a June 22 job opening.

The report suggested that Amazon could be planning to accept digital currency as a payment method but did not specify any timeline. 

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About Author

Wolfie joined The Block’s news team in 2020 and switched to the research side in 2021 to focus on crypto mining analysis. Prior to The Block, he had been a journalist at CoinDesk for three years. Wolfie has a background in financial journalism.