Watching some of these cryptos, you wouldn't even know Bitcoin just got a 15% haircut after $4B worth of positions were steamrolled.
Take a look at Solana...
We thought that this extension target, particularly in the face of the recent action, would act as a logical level to consolidate these gains. But, buyers have continued their charge.
When the market completely ignores these extensions, that's information...
We experienced $3.5B worth of long liquidations in the last 24 hours, with over $1.8B taking place in under an hour at the height of the crash.
Source: ByBt
Bitcoin's total open interest across all exchanges has fallen by a mighty 23%, and Ethereum's OI fell by 25%:
Source: Glassnode
Combined with this, we've seen a 21% reduction in the amount of futures contracts margined with US Dollars, along with a 7% drop in crypto-margined contracts.
That's a sizeable amount of leverage that's been flushed from the system in what can be seen as a healthy reset.
Bitcoin's aggregate average funding rate of perpetual futures positions has fallen into negative territory for the first time since July.
One of the first lessons you learn in technical analysis kindergarten is the principle of polarity.
That is, former support turns into resistance, and vice versa.
The thinking here is that when buyers absorb all the overhead supply looming at resistance, the market has nowhere to go but up. When the market breaks out and retests that former resistance, it turns into support on the way down.
This language of supply and demand is true everywhere, but particularly so in cryptocurrencies, where there are no earnings, dividends, and discounted cash flow models to dilute the necessity of price.
So, with this all said, is this a textbook example of polarity taking place in Bitcoin?
Here's why this "compression" is important to pay attention to:
As markets become more coiled, buyers or sellers are ultimately forced to front up. This period of shrinking volatility is often met with violent unwinds – in either direction.
So when we see these periods of notable reductions in volatility, pay attention because the resolution often sets the tone for weeks and months to come.
Fast forward to today, we're seeing the same setup take place.