Bitcoin (BTC-USD) has extended its gains for the second straight session in Wednesday afternoon trading as cryptocurrencies experienced $1.2B in short liquidations over the past 24 hours, the most seen in 15 months. The world's largest digital token by market cap (BTC-USD) climbed 5.2% to $20.84K at 12:37 p.m. ET but still remains rangebound going back to mid-June. Ethereum (ETH-USD) jumped to its highest since the blockchain transitioned to a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism in mid-September, rising 8.9% to $1.55K.All in all, the global crypto market cap crossed back to over $1T with a 5.4% increase over the last day after spending nearly three months below that threshold, according to CoinMarketCap data. The continued upward pressure within the cryptosphere comes as the outsized level of liquidations in short trades, or wagers on falling prices, could have fueled a short squeeze in token prices. Of note, liquidations take effect when an exchange shuts down a trader's levered and beaten down position since the trader doesn't have sufficient funds to meet margin requirements to keep the losing trade running. Looking at data from Coinalyze, Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto exchange FTX saw the most short liquidations by far, recording $1.02B at the time of writing. That was followed by Binance at $55.1M, OKX at $43.2M and Bybit at $36.6M. While those moves perhaps indicate that crypto prices have bottomed, they also come at a time ...
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