Bitcoin price surged past $76,000 on Tuesday, hitting a four-week high and marking its strongest price move in weeks as a combination of geopolitical optimism, forced short liquidations, and institutional buying pressure drove the rally.
The move began building in the evening of April 13, when bitcoin broke through a dense cluster of leveraged short positions sitting between a bitcoin price of $72,000 and $73,500. Once that resistance cracked, short liquidations became the accelerant.
Over a 24-hour period, roughly $425 million in leveraged short positions in Bitcoin and Ether were wiped out, with 177,000 traders liquidated for a combined $530 million, according to CoinGlass data.
Analysts had flagged this setup ahead of time. Options market data from Deribit showed dealers concentrated in “negative gamma” near $75,000 — a positioning condition where market makers are forced to buy into rising prices and sell into falling ones. Rather than a traditional support or resistance zone, the $75,000 level acted as a volatility release point, with dealer hedging flows turbocharging the upside move.
Iran ceasefire hopes fuel risk assets like bitcoin price
The geopolitical backdrop shifted in a meaningful way on Tuesday as reports emerged suggesting the Trump administration and Iran were moving toward a deal.
A U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which had pressured oil prices above $100 per barrel and weighed on risk assets for weeks, showed signs of easing.
Strategy’s machine keeps running
Institutional demand added fuel to the move. Strategy’s STRC at-the-market preferred stock program recorded more than $1 billion in single-day trading volume on April 13, with all activity occurring above the $100 par value required to trigger share issuance.
According to Bitcoin for Corporations tracker estimates, the volume generated $796 million in proceeds — enough to fund the purchase of an estimated 10,834 BTC at an average price near $73,400. That figure represents more than 24 times the daily Bitcoin mining supply following the most recent halving.
The STRC program has now generated over $3.5 billion in total proceeds to date. Strategy holds about 780,897 BTC, acquired at a total cost of roughly $59 billion, cementing its position as the largest corporate Bitcoin holder on the planet.
At the time of writing, shares of Strategy are up over 8% on the day near $143 a share.
The next resistance band for the bitcoin price sits between $80,000 and $80,600, where positive dealer gamma positioning could act as a brake on momentum. The 200-day moving average stands near a bitcoin price of $87,500, the threshold to watch as confirmation of a true long-term trend reversal.
At the time of writing, the bitcoin price is back down near $75,000.
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Micah first discovered Bitcoin in 2018 but remained a skeptic on the sidelines for too long. Since 2021, he has covered crypto and business and now works as a news reporter for Bitcoin Magazine, based in North Carolina.
