Back on July the 17th, Bitcoin experienced an impressive rise in just a few minutes. The virtual currency moved from $6,700 dollars to $7,400 in just an hour. This strong and positive spike for the crypto community was able to liquidate $180 million worth short positions in just an hour.
Bitcoin Surges and Surprises the Market
Apparently, the cryptocurrency market experienced this important surge amid good news coming from MasterCard working with virtual currencies, the possibility to have the first Bitcoin ETF approved by the SEC, and strong technical factors. At least, this is what Thomas Lee, Fundstrat Global co-founder believes. 
At the moment, Bitcoin is being traded around $7,300 dollars and has a market capitalization of $126 billion dollars. Indeed, at the moment of the spike mentioned before, the volume experienced has been the highest in over a month.
It is also important to mention that during the price increase, Bitcoin trading pairs gained volume in most of the exchanges all over the world. At the same time, the surge was not related to Tether (USDT), which may indicate that there is a fresh inflow of US Dollars in Bitcoin and the crypto market.
In a very short time, $180 million dollars were liquidated on BitMEX during the time period that the spike lasted. The information has been reported by the OTC Trading firm and liquidity provider Cumberland, which also explained that six of the positions were worth $10 million dollars each.
Ryan Rabaglia, head trader at Octagon Strategy commented:
“Markets have been reacting to a number of positive pieces of news, mostly circling around big names such as BlackRock. With any indication of institutional interest in this space comes positive price action, even if it’s unclear in nature. The market just eats it up.”
There will only be 21 million in existence ever, this is why Charlie Lee, Litecoin’s creator said to go for a Bitcoin and then keep buying other alt-coins in the market. “There will be at most 21 million bitcoins in existence,” he commented. “There isn’t even enough BTC to go around for EVERY millionaire to own one. So before you buy any other coin (LTC included), try to own at least 1 BTC first.”
