Bitcoin's 24.6% August Rally Ran on Short Liquidations — SkimNews
Get the Finance newsletter
Daily finance — markets, central banks, M&A, the prints that move money. Free.
- Bitcoin climbed 24.6% over five days in August while coin-denominated open interest fell 12.6% — a combination showing the rally ran on forced short unwinding rather than new long positions, per a joint Glassnode-Bybit report with data through August 23.
- Short positions accounted for 89% of every liquidated dollar during the stretch, with roughly 64,000 BTC worth of open interest closed out across the four crypto-native venues covered (CME excluded).
- The options market ended a 361-day streak of puts pricing richer than calls in a single session, as traders scrambled to reprice a year of accumulated downside positioning.
- Bybit's volatility index traveled four times its normal daily range in one session, and the front of the futures curve repriced sharply while longer-dated contracts barely moved — signals the market read the move as a one-off, not a regime change.
- After Bitcoin crossed back above $80,000 this week on the Federal Reserve's first rate hike since 2023 paired with a dovish forecast, another squeeze liquidated more than $230 million in Bitcoin shorts and over $445 million across the crypto market in one session, with CoinGlass tracking $529 million in 24-hour liquidations.
- The report's authors left open whether August's repricing sticks: a durable shift would show as call-bid skew holding and front-end futures staying firm; a return of put premium would mark it as an event the market absorbed rather than a new regime.
Why it matters: For traders watching open interest and options skew, the key question flagged by Glassnode and Bybit is whether August's repricing marks a durable regime change or a one-off squeeze the market simply absorbed — a distinction that shows up first in whether call-bid skew holds and front-end futures stay firm.
Ask SkimNews
