From Yesterday's Simply Bitcoin Live | Episode 1632
The Numbers
Five straight red weeks of billion dollar liquidations is the longest stretch like it outside a bear market, and Bitcoin just clawed back into the mid 70s anyway.
The News
Binance's Bitcoin perpetuals now account for 91% of its total volume, the highest share ever recorded, and 73% of its accounts are still net long. Traders tracking the pattern count four liquidation flushes in 13 days since the exchange's record $6.3 billion hack, each one wiping a fresh batch of leveraged longs before the next batch piles back in.
The theory spreading across Bitcoin Twitter: Binance still owes roughly $3 billion back to customers after the hack, and driving price into its own liquidation clusters is one way to claw some of that back. Spot buyers have reportedly been quietly absorbing every dip while the exchange's own selling slams price into the same zones, over and over, since the hack happened.
If that selling pressure is actually fading, the $8.28 billion in shorts sitting below current price has nowhere to go but liquidated.
MSCI announced Wednesday evening that Strategy is being deleted from its USA Index, which also pulls it out of MSCI World and ACWI, while Metaplanet exits the Japan Small Cap Index. Both companies had been flagged for months under MSCI's new rule screening out firms that look more like investment funds than operating businesses.
The removal does not force either company to sell a single Bitcoin. It forces index funds to sell the stock, and the change does not take effect until the close of trading on November 30. JPMorgan estimates the Strategy removal alone could push roughly $2.8 billion of MSTR shares onto the market once that date hits.
The index needed a reason to exclude a Bitcoin treasury company. It built one.
Square finished rolling out Bitcoin payments by default across its US merchant network this week, covering more than 4 million sellers. Customers pay over the Lightning Network, the merchant settles in dollars automatically unless they choose otherwise, and processing is free through the end of 2026.
Merchants who want exposure can convert up to 50% of their daily Bitcoin sales into BTC instead of cashing out completely. New York, Georgia, Hawaii and Wyoming are excluded for now over state level digital asset rules. A 1% fee kicks in once the free window ends on January 1.
Bitcoin payments just went from a hobbyist talking point to a checkout option at four million storefronts nobody had to opt into.
The Culture
Guest SegmentHeld, who has been in Bitcoin for 13 years and formerly led marketing at Kraken, thinks the despair of the last few months already marked the bottom. His case: Bitcoin is a $1.5 trillion asset chasing a market that gold alone values at $30 to $40 trillion, and that gap is the thesis, not a store of value versus medium of exchange debate.
He also does not buy the diminishing returns argument everyone keeps repeating. Bitcoin's addressable market is still a tiny fraction of global wealth, and he expects it never trades below six figures again once this cycle turns, with a range of $100,000 to $250,000 if a sovereign debt crisis pushes capital toward it.
His read on payments: Bitcoin failed at being cash only because Bitcoiners set that as the bar themselves.
Opti lays out the case that Binance has been liquidating its own leveraged traders since the hack, then brings on Dan Held to argue the bottom is already in.
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