BTC back above $69,000 as crypto shorts get squeezed

Bitcoin jumped 3% to $69,120 on Monday as traders returned from the Easter weekend to a burst of optimism around a potential Iran ceasefire, pushing the largest cryptocurrency to its highest level in over a week and squeezing $196 million in short positions over the past 24 hours.

Ether led a bump among major tokens with a 3.7% gain to $2,130, its strongest daily move in the past week. SOL rose 2% to $82, XRP added 2.2% to $1.34, and dogecoin climbed 1.7% to $0.093. The broad rally pushed the total crypto market cap back above $2.5 trillion.

The catalyst was an Axios report that the U.S., Iran, and a group of regional mediators are discussing terms for a potential 45-day ceasefire that could lead to a permanent end to the six-week-old conflict.

Reports that more ships had passed through the Strait of Hormuz added to the relief, even as Trump issued increasingly aggressive threats to destroy Iran’s power plants starting Tuesday.

The liquidation data tells the story of how the market was positioned heading into the weekend.

Of the $273.8 million in total 24-hour liquidations across 81,819 traders, shorts accounted for $196.7 million versus $77.1 million in longs, a ratio of nearly 3-to-1 that indicates traders were heavily positioned for further downside after last week’s sentiment collapse. The largest single liquidation was a $10.17 million ETH-USDT short on Binance.

Bitcoin’s 24-hour range stretched from $66,634 to $69,350, a $2,700 swing that caught the worst of the short positioning.

The move came after Santiment data over the weekend showed social media sentiment had hit its most bearish skew since the war began, with five negative posts for every four positive ones. As is often the case in crypto, the most bearish sentiment reading of the cycle produced the sharpest bounce.

The move reclaims the top of bitcoin’s five-week war range but does not break it. The $65,000 to $73,000 channel that has contained every rally and selloff since the conflict began remains intact.

Resistance levels at $71,500 and $81,200, corresponding to the Lower Band and Trader On-chain Realized Price indicators as tracked in a CoinDesk report, sit overhead as the next meaningful tests if the ceasefire momentum holds.

Whether this rally has more substance than the last three depends entirely on whether the 45-day ceasefire materializes or becomes another headline that gets walked back within 48 hours.