Bitcoin’s $87K Rally Wiped Every Major Short Built Over the Past Year

Bitcoin is trading at $83,254 — down 0.02% in the last 24 hours — with a market cap of $1.67 trillion and $27.97 billion in daily volume. Behind that relatively quiet surface reading sits one of the more consequential structural events of the past twelve months: every major short position accumulated against Bitcoin over the last 365 days has been wiped out.

What the Liquidation Heatmap Actually Measures

Liquidation heatmaps are not price predictions — they are maps of where leveraged positions will be force-closed if price reaches specific levels. When a market participant opens a leveraged short at, say, $80,000 with 10x leverage, that position has a defined liquidation price above current market. If enough shorts cluster at a common liquidation band, price is mechanically drawn toward that zone: as shorts get liquidated, buying pressure intensifies, pushing price further into the cluster and triggering a cascade. This is the mechanism Alphractal’s tool visualizes.

The heatmap covering September 2025 through September 2026 identified the largest such cluster at approximately $87,000. Bitcoin’s recent rally reached exactly that level — and by Alphractal’s data, swept the cluster entirely.