Sergey Kalinin's Takes - Business, Tech, Crypto

I've been liquidated. More than once. The first time was insane. I took a 10x short margin position against BTC/USD on Bitfinex below $9K and got liquidated around $56K. One minute you have a position, the next you have a notification and zero balance. I still remember that feeling. That was back when most altcoin pairs only traded against BTC and leverage was something you had to really dig for (OG RU here? :). Things have changed. Margin trading as a start point, perpetual futures then. Leverage is one tap away, and liquidations happen every single day to traders who opened a position without knowing exactly where the exchange would close it. Just remember October 2025 and 6th February 2026. So let's fix that. I have some thoughts to share. What is the liquidation price? When you trade on leverage, the exchange literally lends you money. It is much easier to get a trading loan than to cover it, believe me. If your position moves against you enough that your collater...

No fireworks. Just relentless buying. While most traders waited for either a breakout or a crash, BTC simply walked higher. Five days, +3.7%, $68435 > $70936. No short squeeze, no euphoria. Just demand that quietly outweighs supply every single session. ETF flows are the headline. $765.4m across five consecutive days. After nearly five months of outflows - November, December, January, February - this looks like a behavioural shift, not a dead-cat bounce. Coins are leaving exchanges. About 23000 BTC walked off trading platforms since mid-February - from 2.773M to 2.750M. They're not being sold; they're being held. On March 12, reserves touched a low near 2.730M, then immediately bounced. That's textbook dip absorption. Someone large was buying where retail was nervous. Coinbase Premium says US institutions are back. All through February the index sat deep in negative territory (−0.05, −0.06) - US money was either selling or standing aside. Something changed in early M...

  The market pushed. The Fed pushed back harder. The week delivered +4.7% in two sessions, then a sharp reversal on Wednesday, a cascade of ETF outflows, and a quiet weekend bleed to $67,852. Friday's close at $70,519 shows a loss of just 0.6% week-on-week - a number that completely hides the turbulence underneath. ETF flows - a tale of two halves. Monday and Tuesday brought $199.4m of inflows each. Then Wednesday flipped the script: $163.5m in outflows in a single session - the largest single-day exit in weeks. Thursday and Friday added another $90m and $52m to the red column. The weekly net: −$106.3m. The market entered the week a bull and exited a bear. CME basis - instant repricing. Monday's futures were in healthy contango - Mar26 at $74,655 against spot $73,905. By Wednesday post-FOMC, the basis had collapsed to zero: CME $71,275 vs spot $71,270. The market didn't take days to reprice. It took hours. That's institutional speed. CME open interest: the roll is runni...