Ethereum doubters continued to get rekt Wednesday, with ETH’s continued, remarkable rally triggering hundreds of millions of dollars in short position liquidations.
ETH neared $4,700 early Wednesday for the first time since late 2021, pressing on with a surge that has endured, nearly unabated, since the beginning of August.
The token has evened out to $4,694 at writing, capping a 7.9% climb in the last 24 hours, and a remarkable 52.7% leap since just a month ago, per data from CoinGecko.
Those moves have spelled doom for investors betting on the cryptocurrency’s near-term misfortune. In the last 24 hours alone, over $250 million worth of ETH short positions have been liquidated, according to data from CoinGlass.
Another $44 million in long positions on the token have been liquidated in the same period, bringing total ETH liquidations to over $286 million in the last day.
That figure handily makes ETH the most active crypto asset on the derivatives market at the moment. In contrast, only $41.5 million worth of Bitcoin-related positions have been liquidated in the last day.
Ethereum sits just below all-time high
The sharp focus on Ethereum has only escalated as the token approaches a new all-time high price—a feat not accomplished since the crescendo of the 2021 crypto market bull run.
On November 10, 2021, ETH reached a record value of $4,878. The token is now less than 5% below that all-time high; it has not come this close to breaking it in years. On prediction market Myriad, over 80% of users expect Ethereum to blast through its all-time high and reach $5,000 in 2025 (Disclaimer: Myriad was launched by Decrypt‘s parent company DASTAN).
In the last 24 hours, some $532 million in crypto derivative positions have been liquidated across the entire market. Ethereum shorts represent nearly half of that figure.
Numerous factors are likely responsible for ETH’s recent surge after months of lackluster performance, including recent regulatory moves by the U.S. federal government which are poised to hasten crypto’s integration with the traditional economy.
But the most consequential narrative for ETH these days might be a deflationary one: over the last several months, ETFs and corporate treasuries have so aggressively gobbled up much of the token, that they now hold some 8% of its global supply.
