Bitcoin has been hinting at lower levels during today’s trading session. The benchmark crypto was rejected at around $48,000 and has been unable to reclaim its previous highs.

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At the time of writing, Bitcoin trades at $43,100 with a 1% and 5% loss in the last 24 hours and 7 days, respectively.

Data from Material Indicators records little support for BTC’s price as it moves in a tight range between $42,500 and $43,500. The benchmark crypto has been losing bid orders that could absorb future downside price action.

As the chart below shows, BTC had around $10 million in bids orders that were pulled as the crypto trended to the downside. This liquidity seems to have been distributed between $42,000, $41,500, and $41,000 which could stand as the last line of defense against a fresh assault from the bears.

The chart also shows how an entity places strategic asks orders when BTC’s price attempted to reclaim its previous levels. This happened as investors with asks orders of around $100,000 push BTC’s price back down to the low $40,000.

The biggest sellers of this current price action seem to be retail investors and investors with asks orders of around $10,000 (yellow and red in the chart below). Only investors with bid orders of around $1,000 (green in the chart) seem to have been showing interest in buying into BTC’s price.

The above suggest a potential large entity trying to push BTC’s price down to accumulate BTC at optimal levels. The distribution of liquidity first concentrated at $42,000 and then distributed between those levels and $40,000 seems to support this thesis.

BTC whales often employ this method to trap retail and obtain liquidity to take their positions. Small investors seem to have taken in the bait.

Bitcoin Whales Play Mind Games

Analyst Ali Martinez showed an increased in the number of long positions taken on crypto Binance exchange. The Long/Short Ratio stands at 70% for Long traders and 29% for the opposite side of the trade.

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The analyst commented the following on the potential implications for BTC’s price:

Bitcoin could be preparing for a liquidation cascade! 70.69% of all trading accounts on Binance Futures are currently net-long on $BTC, which may result in a long-squeeze. BTC could go down to $42,000-$41,000 to collect liquidity.