The Bitcoin (BTC) market continues to be dominated by bearish traders. BTC bears dragged down the price of the benchmark crypto to around $17,500, its lowest level in two years, as noted by crypto market intelligence platform Santiment.
In a tweet, Santiment highlighted that bears flocked into the derivatives market during the price rout. This is marked by data that shows FTX exchange and decentralized exchange dYdX seeing their highest ratio of bets against the price of BTC since June and August, respectively.
However, the price move has not entirely favour the bears. Santiment pointed out that amid the price drop, overzealous traders on the derivatives exchanges who attempted to short BTC while expecting a further price drop were massively liquidated.
Historical data from Coinglass supports the finding as the crypto derivatives market monitoring platform shows futures liquidations of over $900 million recorded on Nov 8. Short traders accounted for $234 million of liquidations, while long calls accounted for over $679 million.
Sentiments mixed on BTC’s expected next price direction
The bearish price action has left analysts uncertain about where BTC’s price will head next. According to the former CEO of BitMEX exchange, Arthur Hayes, BTC could reach new lows in the long term. Hayes revealed in a tweet that he had bought some Bitcoin put options with a strike price of $15,000 that will expire in March 2023.
Short-term expectations are also largely bearish, especially ahead of the U.S. consumer price index (C.P.I.) data for October later this week, coupled with fears about the contagion the possible collapse of the FTX exchange could result in.
As ZyCrypto reported last month, September’s CPI data release resulted in slight drops in prices in the crypto market. Meanwhile, FTX’s uncertain future amid a liquidity crunch and an uncertain acquisition by Binance has also affected market sentiments.
Regardless, the price of BTC has staged a modest recovery since hitting the two-year low. Per data from CoinMarketCap, BTC rose to an intraday high of $18,076 before dropping another about 2.87% to be trading at around $17,815 at the time of writing. This has led some analysts to predict that the bottom is in for BTC.
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