BTC climbs to $78,938—why are institutional traders still holding onto short positions?

💡 Impact on the call: Near-term neutral to bearish. Prices are up, but institutional shorts haven’t backed off, and disagreement in the market is increasing.

BTC and ETH have rebounded, but institutional traders’ short positions aren’t decreasing—they’re actually increasing in the face of the bounce. The long-vs-short battle is getting intense.

What’s going on
According to a recent report from Crypto Briefing, during this rebound BTC has broken above $78,938.01 (24h +1.66%) and ETH is at $2,480.17 (24h +0.83%), yet a group of institutional traders’ BTC and ETH shorts have stayed put. In plain terms: retail and some funds are chasing the rally, while the professional market-makers are betting on a pullback. This kind of divergence isn’t unusual. What’s unusual is that the rebound has been going on for several days and the shorts still haven’t admitted defeat and exited—suggesting they’re skeptical about the sustainability of this upward move.

One-line translation: The price is rising, but the people best at doing the math aren’t buying the bullish story.

Market impact
- Short term: With shorts not covering, their position costs are being pushed higher. If price continues to climb, short covering can become additional fuel, potentially triggering a short squeeze. On the flip side, once the rally stalls, these shorts become overhead “chips” weighing on the market. Volatility is likely to expand.
- Medium term: Institutional positioning against the trend reflects doubts about the rebound’s quality. If subsequent macro data aligns, this kind of disagreement usually resolves through a sharp directional move rather than a mild consolidation.

My take
I lean bullish for the near term. The logic is simple: shorts haven’t reduced + price is rising = short-squeeze conditions are building. As long as BTC holds around $78,000, the structure stays intact, and breaking above the previous high is only a matter of time. But here are the risks: if these institutions are right and this rebound is a bull trap, the pullback could be extremely fast. My view is that longs have the edge—but keep positioning cautious. Don’t treat an expanding-volatility phase as a one-way trend.

- Asset: BTC / ETH
- Direction: Bullish📈 Expect price to rise
- Duration: BTC 12 hours / ETH 24 hours

$BTC $ETH #BTC #ETH

📊 Historical backtest
- After similar bullish news like “Metaplanet bought Bitcoin while prices were falling, increasing holdings by $2.42 million” (2024-07-08) was published, BTC’s 12h performance rose/fell by +1.75%. The bullish call was correct ✅
- There were 282 bullish BTC-related news items historically. In 122 cases, the predicted direction matched the actual move (accuracy rate 43%).

⚠️ Not investment advice