Bitcoin reaches for $87K as short liquidations top $120M

Bitcoin (BTC) neared $87,000 on Friday as BTC short liquidations topped $120 million over 24 hours.

Key points:

• Bitcoin broke through sell orders around $85,000, reaching its highest price since Sept. 23 at $86,857.
• CoinGlass’s heatmap showed a cluster of potential liquidations above $87,000 following the breakout.
• Glassnode analysis said that more robust Bitcoin ETF inflows would help confirm broader support for the BTC price uptrend.

Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD reaching $86,857 on Bitstamp before pulling back below $86,000.

BTC/USD four-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

The move, which marked Bitcoin’s highest since Sept. 23, followed fresh fluctuations in exchange order-book liquidity. A concentration of sell orders around $85,000 had kept price action rangebound through the week, but buyers broke through that barrier, per data from onchain analytics platform Glassnode.

“With reduced ask liquidity above, this should allow price to move up faster,” it wrote on X, adding that the remaining sell orders “seem to have been removed.”

BTC/USDT order-book heatmap (Binance). Source: Glassnode

Earlier in the week, Cointelegraph reported that more than $30 million in sell orders had appeared around $85,700. Data from CoinGlass showed a cluster of potential liquidations above $87,300 following the initial breakout, suggesting that liquidation exposure was concentrating at higher price levels.

BTC liquidation heatmap (all exchanges). Source: CoinGlass

BTC short liquidations over the 24 hours to the time of writing totaled $122 million, with the cross-crypto total at $210 million.

The area around $86,000 remains significant, forming the aggregate breakeven zone for investors in the US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).