One of the biggest short squeezes of 2026 came and went in a single session.
Bitcoin rose to $78,000 late Friday, sparking $762 million in liquidations across 168,336 traders, with $593 million of that on the short side, as of CoinGlass.
By Saturday evening hours in Asia, bitcoin had pulled back to $76,091, up just 0.8% on the day, as Iran posted that the Strait of Hormuz was closed to sea 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 closing the waterway, with a supertanker reporting gunfire and cutting off transit.
State news agency Nour said Hormuz had returned to “strict governance and control by the armed forces” in response to a US blockade of Iranian shipping. Several oil tankers that had headed for the strait on Friday turned back.
Friday’s breakout rally ended in a $590 million run of shorts, 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 collapse in a liquidation event since February.
The setup had been under construction for weeks. Funding rates on bitcoin perpetuals were pegged negative, meaning shorts were paying longs a premium to hold their positions.
Friday’s Hormuz reopening was the catalyst that turned it around. Crude fell nearly 10% to $85.90 a barrel. 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 on Friday night that Iran had agreed to an “indefinite” suspension of its nuclear program, although Tehran never confirmed the claim.
None of it survived to Saturday intact.
The market pattern is now familiar, with ceasefire headlines driving a rally, but a reversal headline coming before the breakout can consolidate. The forced relaxation gets another setup to work against.
Ether outperformed bitcoin on the retreat, down just 0.2% over 24 hours, while solana fell 1.3% and dogecoin fell 2.1%. On a weekly basis, ether is still up 5.2%, XRP leads with 6.4%, BNB added 4.6% and bitcoin is at 4.5%.
Whether the $76,000 zone will hold until Monday’s open is now the question. A clean weekly close above $76,000 would preserve the structural break even if the peace trade continues to falter.
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 just wiped out and looking to rebuild.
