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Market Rebound Triggers Nearly Half a Billion in Short Liquidations

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Crypto Market Recovery On February 26.

The crypto market capitalization has moved higher over the past day, with broad gains across major coins reflecting improving investor sentiment.

At the same time, the rebound has squeezed bearish positions, with over $468.5 million in short liquidations recorded during the 24-hour window.

Crypto Liquidation Wave Hits Short Sellers

According to BeInCrypto Markets data, total market capitalization has increased by 4.29%. The majority of the top 10 cryptocurrencies have posted gains over the past 24 hours. 

Dogecoin (DOGE) jumped 9.10%, marking the strongest performance among the 10 largest cryptocurrencies. Lido Staked Ether (STETH) followed, advancing 8.83%. Ethereum (ETH) ranked third among the top performers, jumping 8.75% and reclaiming the $2,000 level.

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Bitcoin (BTC) also posted notable gains, climbing 4.76% over the past day. The flagship cryptocurrency briefly touched $70,027 on Binance yesterday before retracing slightly to trade at $68,647 at press time.

Crypto Market Recovery On February 26.
Crypto Market Recovery On February 26. Source: BeInCrypto Markets

BeInCrypto reported that the rally benefited some long traders who recorded profits amid ETH’s latest rise. However, traders betting on further downside saw losses.

According to Coinglass, 128,348 traders were liquidated over the past 24 hours, with total liquidations reaching $575.59 million. Short traders bore the brunt of the losses, accounting for $468.53 million in liquidations, compared to $107.06 million in long positions. 

Crypto Market Liquidations
Crypto Market Liquidations. Source: Coinglass

Bitcoin alone accounted for roughly 40% of total liquidations, with approximately $194.95 million in short positions liquidated. ETH recorded $203.8 million in total liquidations during the same period, with $175.16 million stemming from short positions.

The largest single liquidation order occurred on Hyperliquid for the BTC-USD pair, valued at $10.41 million.

Analysts Warn Crypto Relief Rally May Not Signal Full Trend Reversal

The recent rally has sparked optimism, but analysts warn it may not mark a full trend reversal. According to XWIN Research Japan, Open Interest has fallen sharply from prior highs, signaling a broad deleveraging phase.

“The recent drop in price was accompanied by falling OI, suggesting that liquidations and derivatives-driven unwinds — rather than aggressive spot selling — played a major role in the decline. This type of reset can stabilize the market, but it does not automatically signal renewed structural demand,” XWIN Research Japan wrote.

At the same time, Binance’s Fund Flow Ratio remains low at around 0.012. Since this metric tracks BTC inflows relative to total exchange holdings, a low reading suggests limited immediate sell pressure. 

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The analysis added that during the drop toward the mid-$60,000 range, the ratio did not spike. This suggested there was no panic-driven spot selling. 

However, XWIN Research Japan noted that weak inflows do not imply strong accumulation. The medium-term trend of the Fund Flow Ratio’s moving averages is trending downward. It indicates that structural demand has not yet shifted upward.

“When leverage remains suppressed, upward price moves can easily trigger short squeezes. In that case, the rally is driven more by position unwinding than by expanding structural demand,” the post read.

Analyst Darkfost also stressed that an increase in spot trading volume will be necessary for any bullish recovery or solid market bottom to develop.

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Crypto World

Solana price breaks out of symmetrical triangle, eyes rally above $100

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Solana price has confirmed a bullish breakout from a symmetrical triangle pattern on the 4-hour chart.

Solana price rallied for the second consecutive day, clocking over 17% as the broader crypto maker recovered. It has now confirmed a bullish breakout from a symmetrical triangle pattern, which could lead to more upside over the coming sessions.

Summary

  • Solana price shot up to an intraday high of $90 on Thursday.
  • SOL price has confirmed a bullish breakout from a symmetrical triangle pattern.
  • Solana ETFs drew in over $30 million inflows over the past day.

According to data from crypto.news, Solana (SOL) price rebounded 17.5% from its weekly low of $76.56 to an intraday high of nearly $90 on Thursday.

On the 4-hour chart, Solana price has broken out from the upper side of a symmetrical triangle pattern that had been forming since early February. A symmetrical triangle pattern is a structure formed when an asset price forms successive lower highs and higher lows as the asset undergoes a period of consolidation.

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Solana price has confirmed a bullish breakout from a symmetrical triangle pattern on the 4-hour chart.
Solana price has confirmed a bullish breakout from a symmetrical triangle pattern on the 4-hour chart — Feb. 26 | Source: crypto.news

When an asset price breaks out from the upper side of such a pattern, it typically tends to continue its upward momentum over the sessions that follow.

In Solana’s case, while the token previously broke the lower trendline of the pattern due to a broader market drop, it was quickly reclaimed as bulls managed to push the token back above the upper trendline of the pattern that had been acting as dynamic resistance.

Based on the bullish breakout, Solana price eyes a rally past the $100 psychological resistance level toward $108, a target calculated by adding the height of the greatest swings within the symmetrical triangle to the point at which SOL price broke out of the pattern.

The bullish forecast is supported by other technical indicators, including the MACD and Supertrend. The MACD lines have pointed upwards with growing green histograms, while the Supertrend has flipped green.

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Catalysts supporting Solana recovery

Solana price jumped amid a broader market rebound triggered by Bitcoin’s bounce back to near $70K levels and bullish market sentiment that followed after a stellar Q4 earnings report by AI chip-making titan Nvidia.

As Solana price surged, it led to liquidations of bearish bets on the leveraged markets. Data from CoinGlass shows nearly $27.5 million worth of short positions were liquidated from the SOL futures market in the past 24 hours, significantly outweighing long liquidations. 

SOL futures open interest has also surged nearly 5% to $5.3 billion over the past day while the weighted funding rate has turned positive.

Meanwhile, a sudden spike in institutional demand for spot Solana ETFs has also played a part in supporting the Solana surge today. Data from SoSoValue shows the spot Solana ETFs recorded a combined inflow of $30.86 million on Wednesday, nearly an eight-fold jump from the prior day and also marking the highest single-day inflows recorded since mid-December last year.

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This renewed demand for SOL amid both derivatives and institutional traders could help it on its way towards the $108 target.

Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.

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Was Jane Street behind the bitcoin crash? A deep dive into why that theory may not not hold

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Bitcoin isn’t losing to gold. It is navigating a liquidity squeeze that the yellow metal never had: Asia Morning Briefing

Bitcoin has dropped like clockwork every morning after the New York market open since late 2025, and crypto fans on X are accusing Jane Street for causing it.

A theory on X has gotten retail participants pointing to the firm for single-handedly driving the asset from $125,000 to $62,000 in recent months.

However, market data and inner workings of an exchange-traded fund (ETF) authorized participant like Jane Street suggest otherwise, observers have noted.

CoinDesk reached out to Jane Street for comment on BTC allegations and did not receive a reply as of European morning hours.

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The allegations

The claim, spread across dozens of viral posts, goes something like this: Jane Street, one of the world’s largest trading firms, was systematically selling bitcoin at 10 a.m. ET every day to push prices lower and then snap up ETFs cheaply.

“BTC has been consistently dumping ~2-3% within minutes of the U.S. cash open (10 a.m. ET) almost every trading day since early November. Many traders point to Jane Street’s massive $2.5B+ position in BlackRock’s IBIT as the likely driver: engineered liquidity sweeps to accumulate spot ETFs at a discount,” Whale Factor, a widely-followed X account said in December.

The recent 13/F filings revealed that Jane Street held roughly $790 million in IBIT shares as of the fourth quarter of 2025.

Jan Happel and Yann Allemann, the co-founders of blockchain analytics firm Glassnode, have also documented these patterns through their shared X account Negentropic and said Wednesday: “Jane street Lawsuit gets made public, and miraculously the 10am $btc slam disappears.”

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The allegations have exploded this week, after the firm was sued by TerraForm Labs’ bankruptcy operator for insider trading that hastened Terra’s demise in 2022. If that’s not enough, the 10 a.m. volatility has vanished in the wake of the lawsuit. Bitcoin surged by over 6% to nearly $70,000 on Wednesday.

In June last year, India’s SEBI banned Jane Street from local markets and froze $566 million in alleged illegal gains, citing a “morning pump, afternoon dump” scheme manipulating the Bank Nifty index on 18 derivatives expiry days from January 2023 to March 2025. The accusations, therefore, suggest Jane Street’s reputation precedes it.

Market data and logic suggest otherwise

The conspiracy that Jane Street has been secretly driving prices lower to snap up IBIT cheap could be challenged, however, using data tracked by crypto economist Alex Kruger, which doesn’t confirm the 10 a.m. dump.

The IBIT ETF has posted cumulative gains of around 0.9% in the 10:00-10:30 ET window; meanwhile, returns in the first 15 minutes have been -1%, according to Kruger. That’s noisy data, not evidence of systematic dumping, Kruger said on X.

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More importantly, both windows closely mirror Nasdaq performance, Kruger added, which means the so-called “10 a.m. dump” was a part of broad risk-asset repricing, not Jane Street foul play.

Jane Street, it should be pointed out, isn’t a rogue operator with unfettered power over bitcoin, but a single player — an authorized participant (AP) — in a regulated ecosystem designed to ensure smooth trading of the ETFs.

“No single firm sits at a terminal pressing “dump Bitcoin.” But the structure itself—the ETF architecture, the AP exemptions, the shift to in-kind creation—creates a grey window where price discovery can be muted without anyone breaking rules,” Yale ReiSoleil, chief technology officer of Untrading, an Ethereum-based financial infrastructure firm, said on X.

Spot ETFs are funds that track bitcoin’s spot price while holding actual coins in custody. Their shares trade on the stock exchange and their prices tend to drift away from the underlying asset’s net asset value (NAV) depending on the demand and supply.

APs like Jane Street, JPMorgan and Citadel Securities are tasked with creating new ETF shares with demand spikes and redeem when demand falls to ensure the ETF price remains tethered to the NAV.

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In the case of bitcoin ETFs, APs are allowed “in-kind” creation and redemption, where they can swap a basket of actual BTC directly with the issuing company, rather than just cash. These dynamics, which are legal and not manipulation, could have led to 10 a.m. volatility.

Short first, buy later

On a typical day, when BTC rises during the Asian and European hours, demand for ETFs spikes in early U.S. hours. This temporarily pushes the ETF price above its NAV. The APs then respond by increasing the supply of shares — sometimes by shorting shares they don’t have — to meet buyer demand and keep trading smooth.

Normally, shorting requires borrowing shares first, which costs money (like loan interest), but regulators have exempted APs from that rule.

Later, when they create new shares, they don’t rush to buy spot BTC right away and often source it privately through an over-the-counter shop. They then short futures or buy put options to hedge the long exposure from creating new shares.

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These things combined can inject temporary downside pressure in the market.

“APs can short IBIT without borrowing costs, thanks to a Reg SHO carve-out. They can hedge that short with futures instead of spot. That means the natural arb that should close the gap between ETF price and NAV never happens, because the AP never buys spot,” ReiSoleil explained.

“Meanwhile, in-kind creation lets them source bitcoin privately, OTC, at their own pace. The spot market never sees the buy pressure. The beginning looks like market-making. The end looks like market-making. The middle is where the integrity of price discovery goes to die,” he added.

Kruger agreed that Jane Street conspiracy theories are typical of the doom-laden sentiment that often emerges after prolonged bitcoin downtrends.

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He firmly disagreed with the allegation that the “short first and buy later” mechanics employed by APs temporarily suppress the price.

“Whether the spot is bought by the AP or the basis trader, the net demand on BTC spot is identical,” he said, arguing that the notion that hedging with futures first (and delaying immediate spot buys) somehow compromises the integrity of price discovery is simply incorrect.

Jane Street has not commented publicly, and no onchain data or exchange records have surfaced tying the firm to a coordinated campaign to push bitcoin lower.

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Bitcoin Price Eyes $80,000 Liquidity Grab as ETFs Resume Buying BTC

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Bitcoin Price Eyes $80,000 Liquidity Grab as ETFs Resume Buying BTC

Bitcoin (BTC) tapped $70,000 during Wednesday’s New York session as bulls targeted sell liquidity.

Key takeaways:

  • BTC price support must hold above a key trendline at $68,000 for the rebound to continue.

  • $80,000 is a key level to watch as the next big liquidation cluster above.

  • Spot Bitcoin ETF inflows attracted half a billion dollars in inflows on Wednesday.

BTC/USD hourly chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Bitcoin must close week above $68,000

Data from TradingView showed the BTC/USD pair at $68,480 on Bitstamp. This is just above the 200-week exponential moving average (EMA), which is currently at $68,338.

Related: Bitcoin tops $69.5K after stocks rebound, strong earnings data boost risk appetite

Analyst Rekt Capital spotted Bitcoin facing resistance from this trendline, saying that the latest recovery could turn into a “post-breakdown retest of the EMA into new resistance” based on historical price action.

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“The moment of truth is coming for Bitcoin,” Rekt Capital said, adding:

“Bitcoin will need a Weekly Close back above the EMA and flip it into new support to go against the grain of history.”

BTC/USD weekly chart. Source: Rekt Capital

Zooming in, fellow analyst Jelle said that the price needs to turn the 50 EMA (at $68,000) on the four-hour chart into support to confirm the recovery.

BTC/USD four-hour chart. Source: Jelle

As Cointelegraph reported, the BTC/USD pair may rally to $74,508, where sellers are likely to step in, if the 20-day EMA, currently at $69,220, is broken by the bulls.

Will liquidations drive BTC price to $80,000?

Several traders are anticipating a possible liquidity grab where a cluster of ask-orders are placed above $72,000.

The latest data from monitoring resource CoinGlass showed BTC price tapping the liquidity around $70,000, with the bulk of interest still clustered above the spot price.

About $2 billion in ask orders are sitting between $72,450 and $75,000.

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Bitcoin liquidation heatmap (screenshot). Source: CoinGlass

If the $75,000 level is broken, it could spark a liquidation squeeze, forcing short sellers to close positions and driving prices toward $80,000, the next major liquidity cluster.

“Bitcoin’s liquidity hunt has only just started,” analyst AlphaBTC said in his latest post on X, adding:

“Unless there is a catalyst to drop, I am expecting these higher levels to get run in the next few weeks.”

Spot Bitcoin ETF inflows support BTC’s upside

Institutional demand is showing signs of a comeback, with US-based spot Bitcoin ETFs recording inflows for two consecutive days, according to data from Farside Investors.

Investors poured a total of $765 million into these investment products on Tuesday and Wednesday, with $507 million flowing into the funds Wednesday, the largest since Feb. 2.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs flows table. Source: Farside Investors

“ETF inflows and short liquidations doing the heavy lifting,” X user Raster said in a recent post, adding:

 “This isn’t retail FOMO, it’s institutional accumulation with a technical breakout.”

This growing demand-side pressure could push BTC prices higher, particularly if combined with growing adoption and whale accumulation.

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Bitcoin Price, Markets, Price Analysis, Market Analysis, Bitcoin ETF, ETF
Source: Shah