When trading cryptocurrency futures, traders can set automatic buy and sell prices. In the early stages, many Bitcoin futures were programmed to sell automatically at $100,000. This created significant buying pressure as the market approached this price. The demand for Bitcoin increased, requiring more fiat currency to execute these automatic sell orders. If the funds available in the market were insufficient to meet this demand, it could lead to a price correction. However, the strong interest and anticipation around the $100,000 price point can contribute to upward momentum, ultimately driving Bitcoin's price toward that level.
I don't know what earlier stage you're referring to had seen bitcoin price at the base of $100,000 while we've an Ath of 99,655.50 on November.
I'll agree with you that during when the market skyrocketed, it created admirations of enthusiasts and investors to buy more of bitcoins and hold with they anxieties that the increase market price would keep on rocking.
I myself can't tell the reason why the market hasn't broken the record of $100,000 but would only assume that it was for a market correction though definitely we'd soon get the market up to the moon at the event of the bull run soonest.
Then it'd become another phase to attract more investors since some enthusiasts awaits for bitcoin taking increment shape before they could buy.
What OP said doesn't make sense because the early days of futures was in 2018 when the price barely made it to $20k. I don't think that these people were setting auto sell orders at $100k when the price was 20k and heading lower.
100k is a simple round number resistance similar to what $1k used to be in the past. That said, the market is heavily manipulated and influenced by extraordinary factors. For instance, we eventually blew past $1k in 2013 but it wasn't natural. It was due to MtGox bot trying to make money for the CEO, so one could say we hit $1k and went higher therefore we should have done the same a few weeks ago.
We always knew $100k would be a resistance, even in 2021 when we were at 70k we knew that 100k is max what we can achieve in that run.