[DigitalToday reporter Jinju Hong] Bitfinex’s bitcoin perpetual futures price briefly surged abnormally, at one point rising above $150,000. It is seen as a temporary price distortion caused by thin liquidity and forced liquidations on a specific exchange, regardless of the spot price.

On Sept. 21, blockchain media outlet U.Today reported that while bitcoin’s spot price traded around $85,000, the price of Bitfinex’s BTC-PERP contract at one point jumped to $153,960.

The price returned to normal levels within seconds. BTC-PERP is currently trading near $85,038, with a 24-hour gain of 5.55 percent.

The spike was confirmed as a localised price distortion on a specific exchange, not a broader spot rally. Bitfinex’s BFX composite spot price index also showed a stable trend during the same period, and its peak was limited to $84,406. No similar surge appeared in the spot market.

Market participants point to a chain of liquidations of leveraged positions as a factor behind the move. CoinGlass data showed 117,116 leveraged positions were liquidated across the cryptocurrency market over the past 24 hours, with total liquidations reaching $688.07 million.

In particular, short liquidations accounted for most of the total at $598.27 million. Bitcoin-related liquidations also reached $354.93 million, of which $338.15 million were short liquidations.

The largest single liquidation was a $11.29 million BTC/USDT contract on Binance. As bitcoin rose, stop-loss and liquidation orders for short positions were executed in succession, and additional market buys during the process may have amplified the price rise.

Thin order books on Bitfinex are seen as having magnified the distortion. If large buy orders pile in when there is not enough selling, the order book can be quickly depleted, creating a temporary liquidity vacuum. In that process, the BTC-PERP price is understood to have diverged sharply from the broader market price and surged to $153,960.

But the abnormal jump did not last even 1 minute. Arbitrage bots that exploit price gaps between exchanges moved in, quickly closing the discrepancy, and the BTC-PERP price returned immediately to the $85,000 range.

The case does not mean an overall uptrend for bitcoin. It showed that in crypto derivatives markets, a combination of high leverage and low liquidity can cause futures prices to diverge sharply from spot markets even over a short period.

Even when spot prices are relatively stable, momentary price distortions can appear if an exchange has shallow order book depth and liquidations occur in a chain, requiring derivatives investors to exercise caution.