Bitcoin (BTC) climbed toward $87,000 on Friday as BTC short liquidations topped $120 million over 24 hours, with order-book data showing sell-side liquidity thinning above the market.

Liquidations occur when exchanges forcibly close leveraged positions whose margin can no longer cover losses; for traders betting against Bitcoin, that typically happens when prices move higher.

Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD reaching $86,857 on Bitstamp before pulling back below $86,000. The move marked Bitcoin's highest price level since Sept. 23 and followed fresh fluctuations in exchange order-book liquidity, according to onchain analytics platform Glassnode.

Buyers break through liquidity wall below $87,000

A concentration of sell orders around $85,000 had kept price action rangebound through the week. Earlier in the week, Cointelegraph reported that more than $30 million in sell orders had built up around $85,700. Buyers ultimately cleared that barrier, with Glassnode noting that the remaining ask-side orders appeared to have been pulled.

"With reduced ask liquidity above, this should allow price to move up faster," Glassnode wrote on X, adding that the remaining sell orders "seem to have been removed."

Following the initial breakout, data from CoinGlass showed a cluster of potential liquidations above $87,300 on its liquidation heatmap, suggesting that liquidation exposure was concentrating at higher price levels. Heatmaps of this kind estimate where leveraged positions would be forced to close, giving traders a read on where exposure is stacked across the order book.

Short liquidations over the 24 hours to the time of writing totaled $122 million, while the cross-crypto total came in at $210 million.

ETF inflows decline after 11-month record

Beyond the derivatives market, the area around $86,000 remains significant, as it forms the aggregate breakeven zone for investors in the United States spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Those funds, which have traded since January 2024, hold Bitcoin directly on behalf of investors, and an aggregate cost basis of this kind marks the average price at which that cohort's capital entered the market.

In the latest edition of its regular newsletter, The Week Onchain, Glassnode said a sustained breakout, accompanied by higher trading volume and renewed ETF inflows, would confirm broader support for Bitcoin's uptrend.

Daily flows have cooled since Sept. 21, when the daily tally reached its highest level in almost a year at $999 million. The funds have continued to buy since then, albeit at a much slower pace.

"The funds are still buying, but at a small fraction of the pace of those two days. A return to inflows near that pace would be the clearest sign of renewed ETF demand," the newsletter wrote.

On Oct. 1, US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded net inflows of $102.7 million, according to Farside Investors. The largest fund, BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), attracted $195 million on the day, while outflows from several other funds reduced the overall tally.