How short liquidations cleared $500B in crypto positions before institutional buyers took over

A massive cascade of short liquidations—roughly $500 billion across crypto markets—was triggered as prices rallied, forcibly closing leveraged short positions and removing a large pool of forced sellers. That deleveraging created available spot liquidity which institutional buyers stepped in to absorb, helping to underpin Bitcoin’s recent gains and establish roughly $77K as a key near-term support. The net effect is a market with less immediate leverage-driven downside and stronger institutional bid, but one that may now be more sensitive to institutional flows and to a break of the $77K support.