Pro traders added to shorts as Bitcoin price broke $12K

What differentiates the current situation from nine days ago is the positions of top crypto traders.

On Oct. 12, these traders increased their longs, but during the recent move to $12,000 these professional traders are opening up short positions.

Despite this flip in sentiment, traders should not automatically conclude that today's pump will turn into a flop exclusively based on the longs-to-shorts indicator.

For starters, there is no way to know for sure how the top traders are positioned off-exchange.

Traders should not mistake optimism with leverage as a positive funding rate on perpetual contracts is also needed to confirm this thesis.

After reading derivatives market indicators, one might conclude that professional traders are leaning bullish by adding long positions above $12K. Except, exchange-provided data on top traders long-to-short net ratios shows this hasn't been the case.

On the other hand, there has been a sizable move in both exchanges over the past two days as top traders were more active on the sell-side when BTC approached $12K. Therefore, regardless of derivatives indicators' bullishness, these traders are signaling a lack of short-term optimism.

These seemingly opposing signals could reflect the recent 15% hike in two weeks, causing some traders to realize gains.

Even though derivatives markets continue to favor a bullish trend, top traders appear to see no reason to add to long positions at the current levels.

Although the top traders call seems to have failed for now, they appear to be in no rush to FOMO at the current levels.