A sector-wide digital asset rally has pushed the prices of bitcoin, ether and other top cryptocurrencies higher — upwards of 14% in the past 24 hours — and liquidated hundreds of millions of dollars worth of short positions from traders betting on a pullback.
According to Coinglass, $323 million in short positions were liquidated in the past 24 hours, compared to $103 million in long positions.
Binance accounts for the majority of the liquidations, with $141 million liquidated — 73% of which were short positions. Bitcoin (BTC) traders were by far the hardest hit, with $233 million in positions liquidated.
Source: Coinglass
The liquidations come amid an industry-wide rally that has seen the price of key assets such as BTC rally as much as 13% on the day.
In the past 24 hours, Bitcoin has climbed from $30,600 to as high as $35,000 – one of its strongest days in the past year.
Bitcoin is largely leading the rally, with Bitcoin dominance – a term for Bitcoin’s contribution to the overall cryptocurrency market capitalization – climbing to a two-year high of 54%.
The rally has been remarkably broad-based. According to data on CoinGecko, in the past 24 hours there are only 8 assets in the top 100 by market capitalization that are in the negative.
Of them, many are stablecoins or commodity-backed tokens such as Paxos’ (PAXG) spot gold token. The only native digital asset that is down over the past day is Bitfinex’s (LEO), down just 0.4%.
Source: https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-liquidated-shorts-rally