When you are checking the liquidation heatmap for $BTC , have you consider more perspective. Like TP targets clusters or SL targets clusters?
Here's another perspective for you.
The Maker don't always eat up the bigger liquidity and don't always need to liquidate people, but The Maker always win.
Let me give you some illustration.
○ Let's say the $BTC price is now at 90k
○ if the price goes up to 95k , 5 Billion USD will be liquidated.
○ If the price goes down to 85k, 1 Billion USD will be liquidated.
Simple thoughts will be that the Maker will most likely liquidate the shorts first.
but what if at 95k there a clusters of people who set TP at 95k resulting in 10 billion Profit?
Then the maker will be at 5 Billion USD loss.
They have all the data including TP clusters and SL clusters, that's how the Maker always win.
That's why you couldn't jump in to a conclusion by only looking at which way liquidate more position, you need more data to that, then you can get more accurate price movement prediction.
Beside that, you can also combine it with Technical Analysis, Macro, or whatever suit you best and manage your risk while trading.
Sometimes even the most simple indicator works best :
○ Buy on fear (bad news)
○ Sell on greed (good news)