$325 million in shorts liquidated amid crypto-wide market rally

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%.