Short squeeze on BitMEX sent Bitcoin closer to the moon on weekend

• BitMEX accounts for 1/3 of all Bitcoin transactions.
• Whales sarted moving coins around.

Bitcoin jumped above $7,000 and touched $7,500 on the weekend. This stellar growth took many investors by surprise as there were no fundamental reasons to back up the movement. However, some experts suggest that the growth was triggered by a massive short squeeze prompted by the sustainable price growth since the beginning of May.  

Both novice traders and crypto veterans assumed that the crypto winter was over for good and liquidated their shorts.    

The liquidation process quickly turned into a self-amplifying process as orders piled, triggered by algo bots.    

The fast movement cause havoc as shorts liquidation was accompanied by new longs.  Many traders with leveraged positions found themselves that found themselves on the wrong side of the market were deep in red.    

The trading volume for the first digital asset jumped to $28 billion on May 11 from $19 billion on May 10. Notably, experts report that on one third of all the volume went through BitMEX, where traders can trade Bitcoin-based derivatives. At the time of writing, BitMEX is responsible for nearly 19% of all Bitcoin trading.    

Whales come into play

The noise and fuss on the market woke up crypto whales that started shifting their coins between wallets. Thus, according to the Whale alert Twitter bot, an unknown large player moved over 6000 BTC coins from one address to another on Sunday, which was worth about  $45,2 at the time of the transaction.  

Then another whale moved 4000 BTC from his/her wallet to Bitfinex making market participants nervous about upcoming dump.  

At the time of writing, BTC/USD is changing hands marginally above $7,000 with an average daily trading volume registered at $15 billion.