Liquidations

Brent settled at $94.65 and about $115 million of leveraged longs were closed inside an hour. The oil price, not the strikes, is what bitcoin is actually trading on.

A Treasury liquidity operation announced on 19 August, not a monetary pivot, triggered the biggest three-day bitcoin move since 2023. Short bitcoin positions built through months of range-bound trading were forced out at whatever bids remained.

Bitcoin bounced from a $74,192 low to $77,000 on May 23 after the US president said a memorandum of understanding with Tehran was close to signing and the Strait of Hormuz would reopen. Short sellers caught the worst of the reversal.

A week after Iran's Strait of Hormuz reopening sent bitcoin past $75,000, the rally has run into a concentrated band of sell orders and increasingly nervous derivatives positioning.

The crypto market shed $1 trillion in value across February 2026 as tariff shocks, tech stock collapse, record liquidations, and geopolitical tensions converged.

Bitcoin dropped more than 5% below $65,000 on February 23 as Trump announced a 15% global tariff rate, triggering $2.56 billion in liquidations across crypto markets.