Behind Bitcoin’s sudden resilience is a $2 billion cash surge that wiped out speculative leverage

- Bitcoin just ate $2 billion in fresh ETF cash like a meat wallet at a Core Dynamics cafeteria — and somehow the leveraged gamblers got cleared out instead. PCE came in-line, which Ryan Lee correctly notes means absolutely nothing gets settled, and September hike odds ticked up to 44%, but BTC held near $78,000 anyway. Why? Because BlackRock's IBIT alone pulled $284 million on Aug. 25, the seven-day ETF streak hit $2.6 billion, and Glassnode shows futures open interest dropped 11% while funding stayed neutral. Translation: the shorts got liquidated at an 85% clip and nobody rebuilt the leverage. That's not a short squeeze — that's a leverage purge with a spot-demand chaser. Stablecoin supply grew $1.25 billion during the rally, so venue liquidity thickened even as offshore participation lagged. Next test is the $81K–$86K confluence zone where cost-basis shelves, gamma flips, and long-term-holder supply all stack. Glassnode wants a settled close above $83,300 to confirm. Below that, $70,000 is the short-term-holder cost basis and $62,900 is where the whole episode unwinds. Friday's Deribit expiry — 81,700 options, calls outnumbering puts — will tell us if the bid is real or just a relay window hallucination. Where's