PK Press Club – The United States reported a higher-than-expected Consumer Price Index (CPI) for December, showing a monthly increase of 0.4% after seasonal adjustment, beating the forecast of 0.3%. The annual CPI rate rose to 2.9%, the highest since July 2024, marking its third consecutive monthly increase.
Markets, both traditional and cryptocurrency markets, welcomed the news with positivity. And what a decision, since the price literally rose by more than 2% in just a few minutes.
Other popular cryptocurrencies like showed even crazier momentum, gaining 3.5% in one minute. We are talking about a multi-billion dollar asset, and such a rapid change in price is not even worth millions, but billions of dollars, so it is analogous to an earthquake.
For a specific group of investors – the sellers, or bears, as they are also called – it was indeed a bit like that.
Crushed Bears: What’s Next?
As we learned from CoinGlass data, the amount of short positions liquidated since the publication of the CPI amounts to $87.23 million, three times more than the amount of long positions. In total, the liquidation of short positions amounted to $250 million, or a whopping quarter of a billion dollars, in just 24 hours.
What is 63% of that? Shorts, and most of them were liquidated after the CPI.
Top bear annihilators traditionally include Bitcoin and , and this time XRP has also reached the top. As the third largest cryptocurrency, XRP surged as high as $2.90, liquidating over $14 million in shorts alone. To put that into perspective, Bitcoin gained $39 million and Ethereum gained $28 million.
It remains to be seen where the market goes from here. All the major news in January, at least on the monetary policy side, has happened. Coming up: the resignation of Gary Gensler, the current chairman of the SEC, in five days, and a change in the American administration.
These developments could introduce new dynamics for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP, leaving investors speculating on whether bullish or bearish trends will dominate in the coming weeks.
