Bitcoin price spikes to '$26K' in USDC terms — How high can the BTC short squeeze go?

cointelegraph.com:

Bitcoin (BTC) refused to let $20,000 support die for good on March 11 as the weekend opened to a battle for lost ground.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD circling $20,200 at the time of writing.

A brief dip below the $20,000 mark overnight was short lived, and the mood appeared more stable on the day as the initial wave of panic over United States bank stability subsided.

The collapse of SVB Financial, which followed Silvergate in dealing a fresh blow to some crypto firms, nonetheless continued to play out.

At the heart of the debacle this time was Circle, the Blockchain firm which overnight revealed that it had lost part of the reserve funds for its stablecoin, USD Coin (USDC) with SVB.

USDC immediately began to slide from its U.S. dollar peg, and at the time of writing was redeemable for only $0.91, while at one point making Bitcoin worth more than $26,000 in USDC terms on major exchange Kraken.

"If USDC is only 90% backed, the equilibrium price is NOT $0.90. The equilibrium price is ZERO," Cory Klippsten, CEO of Swan Bitcoin, reacted.

Others believed that the situation was manageable and that USDC, the second largest stablecoin by market cap, would not fail altogether.

2/ The worst has already happened We now know that 8.2% ($3.3B out of $40B) is currently stuck in SVB, but it doesn't mean that the money is gone.As Adam pointed out, in a similar FDIC recovery process, we can expect a 94% payout.So the damage could be around $198M USD. https://t.co/xvshlKuCmZ

In a tweet, Circle itself said that it had a further five banking partners for managing its USDC cash reserves.

Beyond USDC, nerves among traders predictably remained.

Related: Circle’s USDC instability causes domino effect on DAI, USDD