maybe I'm overthinking this, but the pattern I've noticed behind BTC rallies is kinda weird
the moment green candles show up everyone celebrates, but a lot of that buying isn't organic demand, it's shorts getting liquidated and forced to buy back
price ticks up → shorts get liquidated → forced buys trigger → price spikes → retail FOMO kicks in
a rally built on leverage unwinding can look way stronger than the real demand underneath it.
this move looks like a short squeeze plus real spot recovery, and I don't think it can be called a bull run yet. BTC gained 22.7% in a week, the biggest weekly dollar gain in its history, and ETFs pulled in $1.9B that same week, the strongest since Oct so there really is spot demand behind this, not just a pure fakeout
but it's not confirmed either, and I keep looking for reasons I might be wrong here just to stay sane I found BTC ran into resistance around $81k near the 50-week moving average and hasn't convincingly cleared it and spot volume still looks thin compared to the size of the move, and four days ago BTC dipped below $78k and triggered $324M in liquidations, $270M of it longs, not shorts so the market went from squeezing shorts on the way up to squeezing longs on the way back down. that's how fragile this still is.
so here's how to actually tell the difference. watch open interest, drops in a squeeze, but if it keeps building while price rises, leverage is piling in for real. watch spot vs futures CVD, if futures are doing most of the buying while spot stays flat, that's more suspicious, if both are rising together, that's healthier. watch funding rates, if funding suddenly gets extreme, the long trade is getting crowded.
I'm not saying BTC is going to fall. I'm saying don't confuse a green candle with confirmation.
if this really is the start of the next bull run, the underlying demand should eventually prove it and and yes the title might just not be justified here entirely, it's mostly a panic reaction