On December 17, 2025 (local time), as cheers erupted with Bitcoin breaking through $90,000, how’s your account doing? Just one hour later, it plummeted vertically to $86,000, evaporating $200 million worth of long positions. This wasn’t a simple correction.
This was a meticulously designed ‘hunting ground’ orchestrated by Wintermute, Fidelity ETF wallets, and Binance’s internal market makers. When you hit the buy button after watching the news, they’d already finished preparing to feast on your stop-loss orders.
> Liquidity Hunting
Liquidity hunting refers to the practice where large capital players (institutions, whales) artificially push prices to price levels where retail traders’ stop-loss orders are concentrated, in order to fill their own massive orders.
- Core principle: They need ‘counter-party’ liquidity to fill market orders.
- Purpose: Minimize slippage and secure positions.
- Result: After mass liquidations of retail investors, prices return to their original trend.
> Why You Always Buy at the Top
Deep Dive: Why You Always Buy at the Top Data confirmed as of today (December 18, 2025) shows that institutions no longer rely on chart technical indicators but are manipulating the market structure itself.
Why 1: The ‘Time-Gap Attack’ Between ETF and Exchange Fund Movements
In the past, when coins were deposited to exchanges, it immediately created selling pressure. But current patterns from Fidelity and Coinbase are different.
- Pattern: Large transfers occur from ETF custody wallets to exchanges → No immediate selling.
- Trap: When retail traders panic sell (Short) on news of these transfers, institutions actually pump prices up to $90,000, triggering a short squeeze.
- Endgame: Institutions offload their holdings at the top using the buying pressure from forced liquidations of short positions.
Why 2: Asymmetry in Orderbook Visibility
While you’re staring at the current price window, institutions are viewing heatmaps showing exactly where your liquidation prices are clustered.
- Liquidity Pool: The $89,000-$90,000 range had massive concentrations of retail short liquidation orders.
- Trigger: Institutions know that by just touching this zone with minimal capital, they can trigger cascading forced buys (liquidations) that automatically drive prices up. This is called the ‘cascade liquidation algorithm.’
Why 3: Bilateral Wipeout Targeting Structural Vulnerabilities
The key to this incident is that both longs AND shorts got destroyed.
- Short liquidation: $120 million in shorts evaporated at the $90K breakthrough.
- Long luring: Retail traders pile in with chase buys thinking “New all-time high!”
- Long liquidation: As soon as sufficient liquidity accumulated, massive market sells dumped → Crash to $86,000 evaporating $200 million in longs. In the end, only exchanges and market makers pocketed fees and spread profits.
> The ‘Secret Tech Tree’ for Riding Institutions’ Coattails
This isn’t investing. it’s survival skill. Follow the sequence and combination presented below. Eliminate gut feelings and news. Trust only data.
[Phase 1] Trap Identification
Your first task is identifying where the ‘hunting ground’ is.
Check Liquidation Heatmap
- Tools: Coinglass, Kingfisher (use free/paid versions)
- Action: Find price levels above and below current price where colors are darkest (liquidity is clustered). That’s the institution’s target. $90,000 was that example.
Capture Divergence Between Open Interest and Price
- Indicator: Price rises but open interest drops sharply?
- Interpretation: This isn’t new capital flowing in it’s short positions being force-liquidated pushing price up. 100% bearish signal.
[Phase 2] Sniping Entry Your entry point is right after institutions finish their meal.
Monitor Funding Rate
- Situation: After price spike, funding rate abnormally high (above 0.05%).
- Meaning: Retail traders have gone ‘all-in’ on longs. Institutions are about to come down and slaughter them.
Confirm CVD (Cumulative Volume Delta) Divergence
- Situation: Price hits new high at $90K, but buying volume (CVD) actually declines.
- Judgment: “Buying pressure is exhausted.” Immediate short position entry or cash-out timing.
[Phase 3] Profit Taking No greed. Exit mechanically.
Full Exit When Opposite Side Liquidity Zone Reached
If you shorted at $90K, immediately take profit when the next liquidity concentration zone at $86K (previous support) is reached. Don’t expect a bounce.
> Conclusion The Bitcoin market is not a fair game.
It’s a ‘survival of the fittest’ jungle dominated by information asymmetry. Today’s $90K incident is a typical pattern that will repeat through the end of 2025.
3 Action Items to Execute Immediately:
- Don’t just watch candles: Always have Liquidation Heatmap open, and consider counter-trend trades when price reaches those zones.
- Don’t react to news: When “ETF fund transfer” news drops, don’t buy instead reduce leverage ratio to 1/3 in preparation for volatility expansion.
- Turn off exchange notifications, turn on on-chain alerts: Track specific wallet movements (like Wintermute) through Whale Alert or Arkham Intelligence.
Warning: If you ignore this tech tree and trade on gut feeling, your capital will merely serve as ‘fuel’ for the next liquidity hunt. The choice is yours.
> FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
Q. What if I don’t know how to read on-chain data?
A. Don’t overthink it. Just looking at the ‘Liquidation Data’ tab on sites like Coinglass puts you in the top 10% compared to others. Rather than complex analysis, what matters is the intuition to see ‘where is the money trapped.’
Q. Isn’t liquidity hunting illegal market manipulation?
A. The cryptocurrency market is a regulatory gray zone. Institutions’ large-scale trading is packaged as ‘strategy.’ While you’re debating legality, your money disappears. Learn market logic instead of moral standards.
Q. Does this strategy work in bear markets too?
A. Yes. In bear markets, they do the opposite targeting ‘long position liquidations’ by deliberately dropping prices. The principle of absorbing long orders during the $86K collapse and then bouncing back is exactly the same. Only the direction differs; the mechanism is identical.