Bitcoin has reached $71,475, and not just because whales (institutions or individuals that own 1,000 or more bitcoins) have been increasingly buying bitcoins. In just the last two weeks bitcoin ETFs (exchange-traded funds) have acquired 47,000 bitcoins. That is everyday people, the general public, buying stakes in bitcoin. As the price of bitcoin climbs, more and more people are getting interested and wanting to get in the game.
ETFs are traded the same as stocks, just put in an order with your broker. You no longer have to go through a cryptocurrency exchange, which was a very challenging task and prevented most people from acquiring bitcoins. Each person that spends, say $200 to buy some shares of a bitcoin ETF, is just acquiring a tiny tiny fraction of a bitcoin. But as thousands and thousands of ETF trades take place, that adds up to a lot of actual bitcoins being acquired by the multiple of bitcoin ETFs that are out there.
Another factor driving up the price of bitcoin is the huge overhang of ETF shorts: people and institutions that had bet that bitcoin was going to fall.
Short selling, a practice dating back to the 17th century, involves borrowing shares (or bitcoins) and then selling them immediately. These trades are for a limited time only. The trading corporation has set expiration dates. At the expiration date you have to close out your transaction by buying the bitcoins back. If its price has fallen, you will be buying it back for less than what you had sold it, and you would pocket the difference. But if bitcoin's price has been rising, you will have to buy it back for more than what you sold it at, and you will lose money. Most short sellers close out their positions when they see the trade going against them. For those that haven't sold, the corporation, by law, will force them to close out their shorts, by buying bitcoin, on the expiration date.
Bitcoin short's expiration date which expires on November 8, is almost here, and the owners of the shorts can see the handwriting on the wall. Once bitcoin passed $71,000 in Asia, there was a huge liquidation started on the $75,000 bitcoin shorts. In order to cover their short position, they had to buy bitcoins, which drove up the price of bitcoin and made more people/institutions holding shorts decide to sell their positions, which will cause more to close out their positions.
Eventually there will be no more shorts left, and the pressure will be off, but then there are the next and next expiration dates coming up. As bitcoin continues to climb, more and more people will decide it has gone too high and buy shorts, but too many factors, such as countries worldwide destroying their currencies and making people buy gold and bitcoin to protect their savings, will continue to drive the price of bitcoin higher.
This will cause more and more shorts to have to be covered as the future expiration dates arrive, driving the price of bitcoin higher and higher. And, well, you get the picture.
This is getting interesting.