As the price of Bitcoin heads for new highs, bears are feeling the pain today.
The price of Bitcoin broke $20,000 this morning, in a sudden spike that sent its market cap past $380 billion for the first time ever.
Naturally, Bitcoin believers are excited.
Bears, though, are probably less so. According to data on the crypto trading platform Bybt, over $450 million in Bitcoin short positions has been liquidated over the past 12 hours.
And beyond Bitcoin, over $520 million of all cryptocurrency was liquidated across the broad range of exchanges trawled by the site (these include Binance, Bitmex, OKEx, and FTX).
Liquidations of short positions on #Binance in the past hour: $94,293,438#Bitcoin
Chart: https://t.co/sF5leWOdat pic.twitter.com/Ch3PWrkLhQ
— glassnode (@glassnode) December 16, 2020
Nearly 50,000 traders were affected, and while the biggest losers were Bitcoin shorters, around $31 million of Ethereum and $22 million XRP was also liquidated.
The global crypto market cap has risen by 6% today, and almost every major coin is up.
Tag someone who needs to see this pic.twitter.com/CLiegHauqp
— Pomp
(@APompliano) December 16, 2020
(@APompliano) 
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