A whale made a Bitcoin (BTC) futures purchase of $5.7 billion following the false report suggesting that BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, had obtained approval for a BTC spot exchange-traded fund (ETF). 

Ki Young Ju, co-founder and CEO of market resource CryptoQuant, highlighted this development on X. Bitcoin’s pump on the back of the false ETF report had catalyzed a high trading activity and short liquidations. Ju confirmed that the market witnessed $42 million in liquidations.

Contrary to initial speculation, this market surge does not qualify as a traditional short squeeze, according to Ju. Though numerous short positions were closed, the forced liquidation of these positions constituted a relatively minor part of the overall trading frenzy.

Notably, the massive $5.7 billion BTC futures purchase was reflected in the overall taker volume in the market. Taker volume refers to the volume of trades that are executed immediately at market prices.

Maartunn, a CryptoQuant analyst, confirmed that taker buy volume spiked to $5.7 billion while taker sell volume surged to $5.3 billion. This significant taker volume was the highest recorded in the market in two years, underscoring the impact of the BTC ETF report.

The false BTC ETF report

The surge in market orders was driven by those looking to capitalize on the BlackRock ETF news. Market orders, which allow for immediate execution at prevailing market prices, were favored by traders who sought to enter the market during this price rally.

Prominent crypto media outlet Cointelegraph tweeted yesterday that the U.S. SEC had approved BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin spot ETF application. The report elicited optimism within the crypto community, resulting in a sharp uptick in demand.

This demand catalyzed a spike in Bitcoin’s trade volume on spot and futures exchanges, leading to a rapid surge in the asset price. Bitcoin was already on an upward trajectory at the time of the disclosure. The report compounded the rally, leading to the $30,000 mark.

The report was debunked by Fox Business Journalist Eleanor Terrett, who said BlackRock confirmed that their ETF application was still under review. Cointelegraph retracted the statement and apologized, but the damage was already felt, with $84 million in shorts liquidated yesterday, per Coinglass data.

Rollbit, an Ethereum-based crypto-focused casino and trading platform, shared a snapshot of a user named Cointelegraph transforming $50,000 to $2.2 million in a BTC long trade. However, this snapshot has not been verified as of press time, and could merely represent an effort at humor.

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