Short Traders Suffer $200M in Losses as Ether, Cardano Lead Crypto Majors' Gains

Traders betting on a market-wide decline were caught offside as a broad recovery in the past 24 hours saw some $200 million in shorts, or bets against price rises, getting liquidated.

The amount added to the more than $150 million in shorts liquidated earlier this week as bitcoin and ether broke above key resistance levels, and majors like XRP and solana (SOL) rose as much as 20%. Similar levels of liquidation on short trades haven't been seen since October, data from CoinGlass shows.

Ether-tracked futures experienced $110 million in both short and long liquidations, the most among all major cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin futures saw $77 million in liquidations, while avalanche (AVAX) and gala (GALA) saw $4.5 million in losses apiece after volatile trading on Wednesday.

Crypto exchange OKX took the lion’s share of these liquidations at over $128 million, followed by Binance at $42 million. Overall, the price surge saw total market capitalization increase by some 3.5% in the past 24 hours, CoinGecko data shows.

Bitcoin rallied above $18,000 on Thursday after pushing the threshold for the 10th time in 12 days on Wednesday. Ether rose over $1,400 to add 4.5% in the past 24 hours, while cardano (ADA) added as much as 5% before retreating.

Meanwhile, crypto funds such as QCP Capital see a strong breakout above $18,000 for bitcoin as a key indicator of recovery, with the next such level being $28,000. “Despite the mini-rally, BTC is still trading in an extremely tight falling wedge – with $18,000 the key breakout level to the topside,” the fund said in a Telegram broadcast last week.

“ETH continues looking decidedly more bullish than BTC, although it too is still trading within a consolidation pattern,” QCP said.

Consolidation in technical analysis refers to an asset oscillating between a well-defined pattern of trading levels. Consolidation is generally interpreted as market indecisiveness, which ends when the asset's price moves above or below the trading pattern.