Carmelo_Alemán2026-04-23

BTC’s Rally Was a Short Squeeze

Yesterday, April 23, Bitcoin posted a rally driven mainly by the futures market, not by dominant spot demand. In the relevant leg of the move, price advanced from $76,351 to $79,447, marking a gain of $3,096 and an approximate increase of 4.05%. During that move, Open Interest expanded sharply alongside price, rising from the $24.88 billion area to approximately $28 billion. That acceleration in open interest reinforces a precise structural reading: the impulse did not come from solid spot validation, but from increased leveraged pressure in derivatives. The result was a very broad Short Squeeze across BTC and ETH. In Bitcoin, short liquidations reached $607,931,161.69, while in Ethereum they rose to $580,981,581.13. Combined, short liquidations totaled $1,188,912,742.82, or approximately $1.19 billion. As for long liquidations, the impact was far more limited in Bitcoin, where only $12,836,598.42 was liquidated. In Ethereum, however, a more relevant figure appeared, with $98,526,338.05 in long liquidations. In total, long liquidations reached $111,362,936.47. The thesis supported by the data is clear: Bitcoin did not rise because structurally dominant spot demand entered the market, but because an expansion in futures leverage ended up forcing a large-scale exit of short positions. That explains both the violence of the move and its potential fragility. As long as price depends more on derivatives than on solid spot validation, the structure will remain vulnerable to reversal. Visual attribution: the BTC price chart used in this analysis comes from TradingView and CryptoQuant. Carmelo Alemán | On-Chain Analyst | Verified at CryptoQuant Connect with me: ♦️ X: @oro_crypto ♦️ LinkedIn: Carmelo Alemán ♦️ YouTube: OroCryptoCanal ♦️ Email: [email protected] For collaborations, questions, or comments, feel free to get in touch.