One of the biggest short squeezes of 2026 came and went in a single session.
Bitcoin climbed to $78,000 late Friday, triggering $762 million in liquidations across 168,336 traders with $593 million of that on the short side, per CoinGlass.
By Saturday evening hours in Asia, bitcoin had pulled back to $76,091, up just 0.8% on the day, as Iran broadcast that the Strait of Hormuz was closed to maritime traffic again less than 24 hours after its foreign minister declared it fully open.
Two tanker owners told Bloomberg their vessels received Iranian radio transmissions shutting the waterway, with one supertanker reporting gunfire and aborting transit.
State news agency Nour said Hormuz had returned to “strict management and control by the armed forces” in response to a U.S. blockade of Iranian shipping. Several oil tankers that had raced toward the strait Friday on the initial reopening news turned back.
Friday’s breakout rally ended up in a $590 million shorts rout, with bets on bitcoin accounting for $381 million in liquidations, the largest share, followed by ether shorts at $167. Shorts outweighed longs by nearly four to one, the cleanest short-heavy breakdown in a liquidation event since February.
The setup had been building for weeks. Funding rates on bitcoin perpetuals were pinned negative, meaning shorts were paying longs a premium to hold their positions.
Friday’s Hormuz reopening was the catalyst that flipped it. Crude oil dropped nearly 10% to $85.90 per barrel on the initial headline, and bitcoin broke above the $76,000-$78,000 zone that has capped every rally attempt since the February 5 crash.
President Donald Trump then told reporters Friday night that Iran had agreed to an “unlimited” suspension of its nuclear program, though Tehran never confirmed the claim.
None of that survived into Saturday intact.
The market pattern is now familiar, where ceasefire headlines drives a rally but a reversal headline arrives before the breakout can consolidate. The forced unwind gets another setup to work against.
Ether held up better than bitcoin on the retreat, down just 0.2% over 24 hours while solana dropped 1.3% and dogecoin fell 2.1%. On a weekly basis, ether is still up 5.2%, XRP leads at 6.4%, BNB added 4.6%, and bitcoin sits at 4.5%.
Whether the $76,000 zone holds into Monday’s open is now the question. A clean weekly close above $76K would preserve the structural break even if the peace trade keeps whipsawing.
A loss of the level and bitcoin is back in the same range it has been trapped in since March, only this time with the short base that just got wiped looking to rebuild.
Source: https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/04/18/bearish-bets-lose-usd593-million-as-bitcoin-jumps-with-iran-fully-opening-hormuz
