Bitcoin faces major short liquidation cluster near $90K, Glassnode says

Bitcoin’s biggest pool of vulnerable short bets is sitting right overhead. On October 4, 2026, on-chain analytics firm Glassnode flagged that the largest short liquidation cluster sits near the $90,000 level. With Bitcoin trading between $85,000 and $86,000 at the time, that cluster is not some distant target. It is a few percentage points away, which is close enough to make leveraged bears a little twitchy. If price reaches that zone, Glassnode’s data suggests a wave of leveraged short positions could be forced to close. That kind of mechanical unwinding is how a quiet market turns loud in a hurry. What Glassnode’s heatmap shows Traders who short Bitcoin with borrowed money are betting the price will fall. If it rises instead and hits a certain threshold, exchanges close those positions automatically to protect the borrowed funds. Closing a short means buying the asset back. When enough of those forced purchases land at once, they can push the price higher, which can trip the next batch of liquidations. Glassnode’s read is that the densest concentration of these trip wires sits around $90,000. Estimates of cumulative short liquidations approaching that level run into the hundreds ...