Bitcoin may be flirting with new record highs above $112,000, but traders, ever the contrarians, seem more interested in hedging their optimism with a healthy dose of paranoia. The flagship cryptocurrency recently surged from $106K to over $110K, yet retail traders apparently took that as a cue to bet against it. Coinalyze data shows the long/short ratio tumbled from a relatively upbeat 1.223 to a moody 0.858, suggesting that more accounts are now leaning short than long. For those keeping score, this is the same retail sentiment that cheered Bitcoin to the moon in 2021. This time around? Not so much.

Meanwhile, open interest rose from $32 billion to $35 billion, because nothing says “confidence” like pouring capital into a bet that everything is about to go terribly wrong. Oddly enough, funding rates remain positive; an indication that plenty of traders are still opening long positions. So, in short: no one agrees on anything, and everyone’s nervous. Typical crypto.

Bitcoin’s been stuck in a sideways grind since May, bouncing between $100K and $110K like a drunk Roomba hitting the same two walls. Technical indicators aren’t helping. The Relative Strength Index (RSI) is showing bearish divergence on every visit to $110K, each rally is a little more exhausted than the last, kind of like traders watching their positions evaporate in real time.

This behavior suggests that many are just range-trading, shorting at resistance and longing at support, like clockwork. June 22 offered a case study: Bitcoin briefly dipped below $100K, the long/short ratio skyrocketed to 1.68, and then, plot twist, it bounced. It’s almost like they’ve done this before.

Still, if Bitcoin breaks convincingly above the current ceiling, we may see a short squeeze. That’s when shorts start panicking, stop losses get triggered en masse, and suddenly everyone’s buying into a rally they bet against. It’s chaotic, it’s dramatic, and in crypto, it’s practically a rite of passage.

So yes, the market looks nervous. But in this industry, that’s usually when things get interesting, or catastrophic. Possibly both.

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