Short sellers see $50 million liquidated as BTC, ETH surge

Bitcoin and Ethereum have seen more than $50 million in short liquidations in the past 24 hours, with these coming as prices surged to multi-week highs.

Despite most of the liquidation volume coming from shorts, bullish bets also suffered, with over $58 million in long positions liquidated across the market. Early trading hours on Wednesday though saw the market rip higher, with Bitcoin (BTC) jumping from lows of $64k to above $66k on major exchanges. Ethereum (ETH) rose above $3,500.

This price spike led to widespread liquidations, as data from Coinglass indicates. Bearish bets accounted for the largest share of liquidations across many digital assets. Coinglass data shows Bitcoin alone saw more than $30 million in short liquidations, while Ethereum had over $21 million.

Other top altcoins and meme coins also experienced significant liquidations, including Solana with over $4 million, Worldcoin with more than $4.9 million, and XRP with over $4.5 million in short positions liquidated. Meanwhile, meme coin Pepe saw over $2.9 million in short liquidations amid rising prices.

Overall, the market recorded over $155 million in liquidations in 24 hours at the time of writing, with more than $94 million of this being shorts.

Are bulls in charge?

Crypto prices have been generally up since the weekend, a trend noted by analysts at Bitfinex over the past two months. However, they cautioned that prices might flip during the week due to ongoing sell-off pressure, as seen on Tuesday when Bitcoin and Ethereum traded lower following news related to Mt. Gox, allowing bears to push prices down.

Despite this, sentiment remains largely positive, and net inflows are on a streak. Crypto analyst Michael van de Poppe suggests that if BTC stabilizes above $65k, it may allow bulls to target a new high.