In an astonishing Monday morning rally, the price of Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) surged past the $31,000 mark, only to gain further momentum and exceed $34,000 later in the day, according to data from CoinGecko.

What Happened: This new milestone not only set a record high for 2023 but also reached values that haven't been witnessed since May of last year. The sudden surge in Bitcoin's price triggered a torrent of BTC shorts, resulting in a staggering $170 million in liquidations within the past 24 hours, as reported by analytics firm CoinGlass.

The majority of the BTC short positions were concentrated on prominent exchanges like Huobi, Binance, and OKX. Huobi accounted for the highest number of shorts at $54.19 million, followed by Binance at $48.21 million, and OKX at $45.82 million. These large positions represented 26.79%, 23.83%, and 22.65% of their total shorts, respectively.

Interestingly, on the crypto exchange Coinbase, Bitcoin was trading at a premium closer to $35,000.

Within the same 24-hour period, over 83,858 traders faced liquidation, resulting in a total of $351.48 million being liquidated across various exchanges. Notably, the largest single liquidation order occurred on Binance, with a BTC-USDT value of $9.98 million.

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Why It Matters: This comes as global investment giant BlackRock updated its application to indicate that it had undertaken preliminary steps to launch its Bitcoin spot ETF. This included allocating funds and securing a ticker symbol. While approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is not yet guaranteed, BlackRock's actions suggest a growing confidence that the regulatory body will eventually approve the Bitcoin spot ETF.

A judge in Washington, D.C. issued an order directing the SEC to reconsider an ongoing and legally disputed application for a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) submitted by Grayscale. This action comes after the SEC failed to respond to a previous court inquiry on the matter.

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