The truth behind “pushing the order book”: it’s not that the market maker doesn’t want to sell—now it’s about squeezing shorts to liquidate and close out short positions
The buying pressure pushing it up right now is, for the most part, not the market maker proactively spending money to buy. Instead, it’s buy orders forced by short liquidations.
If you’re holding a short and the price moves upward, once liquidation is triggered, the system will market-buy BTW to close your short position. That buy order keeps pushing the price higher, triggering more short liquidations in a chain reaction, forming a short squeeze (a squeeze of shorts).
Why isn’t the market maker selling right now?
1. The priority is to liquidate and close short positions—not to sell spot
BTW holders are highly concentrated, and the order book depth is extremely thin. The prior downtrend attracted lots of retail traders to open shorts. Now the market maker’s goal is to blow up this batch of leveraged shorts.
The market maker has already pre-locked spot and placed many limit orders. After blowing up the shorts, they can realize contract profits faster than slowly selling spot to exit.
As long as there are still batches of short positions not fully settled, they will keep pushing upward instead of dumping to sell. Only after shorts have been liquidated enough—when there are no new forced-buy liquidation orders—will they flip and dump to sell spot.
2. Liquidity is too poor—selling at high levels can’t be done all at once
This kind of “shady” alt has very thin order-book layers. If the market maker were to directly and massively dump spot, the price would collapse instantly, and there wouldn’t be enough buyers to absorb the supply. Then the market maker themselves wouldn’t be able to sell much either.
During the squeeze, the retail traders who get liquidated are the market maker’s best “buyers.” Once a large number of shorts are forced to close and trading volume expands, there will be sufficient liquidity for the market maker to cash out their spot holdings.
3. It has an independent momentum and can break away from the broader market
Tonight the broader market is generally bleeding, but BTW can run on its own. Because it doesn’t need much capital: with a thin order book, a small amount of money can push the price up—specifically hunting down crowded shorts. It doesn’t really follow the BTC/ETH trend at all. $BTW #BTW
The buying pressure pushing it up right now is, for the most part, not the market maker proactively spending money to buy. Instead, it’s buy orders forced by short liquidations.
If you’re holding a short and the price moves upward, once liquidation is triggered, the system will market-buy BTW to close your short position. That buy order keeps pushing the price higher, triggering more short liquidations in a chain reaction, forming a short squeeze (a squeeze of shorts).
Why isn’t the market maker selling right now?
1. The priority is to liquidate and close short positions—not to sell spot
BTW holders are highly concentrated, and the order book depth is extremely thin. The prior downtrend attracted lots of retail traders to open shorts. Now the market maker’s goal is to blow up this batch of leveraged shorts.
The market maker has already pre-locked spot and placed many limit orders. After blowing up the shorts, they can realize contract profits faster than slowly selling spot to exit.
As long as there are still batches of short positions not fully settled, they will keep pushing upward instead of dumping to sell. Only after shorts have been liquidated enough—when there are no new forced-buy liquidation orders—will they flip and dump to sell spot.
2. Liquidity is too poor—selling at high levels can’t be done all at once
This kind of “shady” alt has very thin order-book layers. If the market maker were to directly and massively dump spot, the price would collapse instantly, and there wouldn’t be enough buyers to absorb the supply. Then the market maker themselves wouldn’t be able to sell much either.
During the squeeze, the retail traders who get liquidated are the market maker’s best “buyers.” Once a large number of shorts are forced to close and trading volume expands, there will be sufficient liquidity for the market maker to cash out their spot holdings.
3. It has an independent momentum and can break away from the broader market
Tonight the broader market is generally bleeding, but BTW can run on its own. Because it doesn’t need much capital: with a thin order book, a small amount of money can push the price up—specifically hunting down crowded shorts. It doesn’t really follow the BTC/ETH trend at all. $BTW #BTW