Bitfinex briefly quotes Bitcoin at $155K because the order book said "hold my 🍻

A thin order book on Bitfinex briefly repriced the $BTC-PERP perpetual futures contract to a surreal $153,960 late Tuesday while spot Bitcoin was trading near $85,000, according to data from the exchange. The contract returned to market levels within seconds and was last seen around $85,038, up 5.55% over 24 hours, while the BFX composite spot price index held steady and never crossed $84,406 during the squeeze.

The exchange attributed the spike to a localized liquidity shortage on the $BTC-PERP pair, and arbitrage bots flattened the discrepancy in under a minute. Market observers pointed to a broader cascade of forced liquidations across venues as the likely accelerant for the move.

According to Coinglass, liquidations over the past 24 hours hit 117,116 traders for a combined $688.07 million, with shorts bearing the brunt of the damage at $598.27 million. Bitcoin alone accounted for $354.93 million of those liquidations, of which $338.15 million came from short positions, and the single largest order — an $11.29 million $BTC/USDT contract — was executed on Binance. The mechanics, analysts noted, are familiar: an upward price tick triggers automatic buybacks on underwater shorts, and in a shallow book those forced bids can sweep through resting limits and produce a near-instant price vacuum.