Exchange balances had fallen to multi-year lows with more than 80% of supply held by long-term holders, said Stephen Wundke, strategy and revenue director at Algoz. As spot buying pushed through $65,000 and then $70,000, short positions were closed out at scale, and the engines doing it fed automated market buys into a book already short of coins. Bitget Wallet's Lacie Zhang put the total at more than $4 billion of crypto shorts over two to three days, with Bitcoin shorts alone around $2.75 billion during the initial squeeze.
Analysts' differing outlooksHe expects the market to hold its range, with $80,000 "an important upper boundary." Whales had stopped selling and begun to accumulate again, he wrote, though not yet at a scale that would imply "an immediate and sustained breakout," which he did not expect them to reach over the next 12 months.
Tim Sun, senior researcher at HashKey, told Decrypt what matters is the change in what is driving the price rather than the level itself. A thoroughly deleveraged market, a weaker dollar, concentrated short liquidations and returning ETF flows together suggest the market "seems to be forming a consensus around the bottom range," he said.
Like Butterfill, Sun also put "clear resistance" near $80,000, adding that clearing it would need "new incremental capital and more definitive macroeconomic catalysts." He said the cycle's bear market bottom had "essentially taken shape," with any further fall more likely "a secondary confirmation of the bottom area" than a break below the previous low. He stopped short of calling a bull market, describing this instead as "a trend re-selection phase in the late stage of the bear market."
Wundke told Decrypt that the week’s movement represented "a textbook demonstration of supply illiquidity meeting a sudden demand shock." Spot ETFs compounded the squeeze, he said, because unlike futures they require firms to buy and lock up actual Bitcoin, "directly depleting the already scarce exchange reserves." Treasury yield relief, ETF buying and regulatory signals were "the spark," he said, while the cascading liquidations "provided the explosive fuel."
With many holders back in profit at current levels, Wundke said the bear market may be over. "The next major obstacle is $82,000," he said, adding that clearing it this week could open a path toward $95,000, and that Bitcoin now "looks like any sell offs in price will be treated as buying opportunities from here on."
Bernard Fisher, chief marketing officer at payments firm Oobit, landed between them. There is "more to this than just another random pump," he told Decrypt, pointing to ETF inflows, a weaker dollar and the squeeze alongside Trump's comments. He is not, however, ready to call the bear market over. "The big question now is whether Bitcoin can hold these levels once the hype settles down," he said. "For now, I am cautiously bullish, but I would not rule out a bull trap just yet."
