Bitcoin bulls push BTC to $23,300

• Bitcoin reached highs of $23,342 on Binance, with a break above $22k extending the year-to-date gains.
• BTC price is up 30% in a month and has recovered 47% since dropping to as low as $15,500.
• Short liquidations amounted to about $376 million in the past 24 hours.

Bitcoin surged to highs above $23,000 on Saturday morning, rising to $23,342 on Binance as the price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market cap reached levels last seen in mid-August 2022.

BTC was trading around $22,900 at the time of writing, up about 9% in the past 24 hours after shedding some gains.

However, the bitcoin price is still up 35% over the past 30 days, according to cryptocurrency trader and analyst Rekt Capital. pointed out Earlier this morning, BTC is up more than 47% since it plunged to $15,500 amid an FTX dump.

🐳 # Bitcoin It has now passed $22.7K for the first time since August 18, 2022. The price hike came with the 1,000 to 10,000 Big Whale Address Collection. BTC dollars Collectively collected 64,638 ($1.46 billion) BTC dollars in the last 15 days. 👍 https://t.co/H6jCsZDgUR pic.twitter.com/RaN2I48ybg

Saniment (@santimentfeed) January 20, 2023

More than $376 million of the shorts were liquidated

With bitcoin surging to highs near $23,350, liquidation data shows that about 80,497 traders have liquidated in the past 24 hours.

According to Coinglass, the largest liquidation short was on Bitmex where an order of $4.53 million was placed. The total liquidations as of 06:10 AM ET on January 21 were $376.61 million.

Notably, total liquidations are not at the levels seen when BTC/USD broke above $20,000 last week towards erasing all post-FTX losses. Despite this, it still appears that some traders are convinced that this could be a giant bull trap.

But as it stands, more bullish momentum could lead the bulls to target $25,000 or possibly higher if sentiment across risk markets helps buy pressure.