This week, bitcoin awoke from its slumber, springing out of bed. Going in, bitcoin volatility was as compressed as it has been in a decade, with BVOL 7D at 2.82, the sixth-lowest reading in ten years, described at the time as a “historically stretched elastic band.”
Fidelity’s Jurrien Timmer, writing days before the move, had bitcoin floundering around $65,000 with no visible catalyst in either direction, though he guessed that a rising tide in gold would eventually take bitcoin and ethereum with it.
The band snapped on Thursday morning. Bitcoin added roughly $4,400 in fifty minutes, touching $69,500 and liquidating about $1.1 billion of shorts inside an hour. It might’ve been the largest single-day short liquidation in bitcoin’s history.
By Thursday morning, bitcoin was near $72,000, up more than 7% on the day and roughly 12% on the week. Ethereum did better still, opening Thursday up 17.5%, with XRP up 13%.
Spare a thought for Jim Cramer, who sold all of his bitcoin immediately beforehand, and for everyone who insisted they were waiting for a Saylor liquidation to buy. “Everyone buys bitcoin at the prices they deserve.”
