Quarter Billion in Ethereum Shorts Get Rekt as ETH Nears All-Time High

In brief

Ethereum jumped nearly 15% Friday after Fed Chair Jerome Powell hinted at rate cuts, but the token stalled just short of eclipsing its all-time high of $4,878.
More than $340 million in Ethereum long and short positions were liquidated in the last 24 hours, making up over half of all crypto market liquidations.
Regulatory tailwinds, corporate treasury purchases, and ETF inflows have strengthened demand for the asset, but failed to push it past a price record it’s failed to beat in nearly four years.

Ethereum short traders lost hundreds of millions of dollars Friday as ETH came within inches of breaking past its all-time high price, but ultimately failed to rise to the occasion.

In the last 24 hours alone, over $259 million worth of ETH short positions have been liquidated, according to data from CoinGlass. Another $80 million in long positions on the cryptocurrency have expired as well—bringing the total value of ETH liquidations in the last day to over $340 million.

That figure makes up over half of all liquidations across the entire crypto market in the last 24 hours. Just north of $668 million in crypto derivatives have been wiped out in the last day, a clear signal that, at least for the moment, all eyes are on ETH.

The cryptocurrency has been on a tear in August after a largely lackluster year, but fell off again this week amidst macroeconomic uncertainty. Then, a long-awaited signal this morning from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, indicating that the U.S. central bank might soon cut interest rates, sent Ethereum and other altcoins surging.

Immediately following the announcement, ETH popped nearly 15%, briefly eclipsing $4,842 in value. The token’s previous all-time high price of $4,878 was reached nearly four years ago, on November 10, 2021—at the peak of the last crypto bull run.

Traders couldn’t quite push the cryptocurrency over the finish line, however. After coming within 1% of notching a new record price, ETH stalled, and then dipped, heading south again below the $4,800 mark. The token is trading at $4,773 at writing. The price of ETH also came close to a record last week before dipping.

In recent months, regulatory developments in the United States particularly well suited to benefit the Ethereum ecosystem have made the cryptocurrency a more attractive buy, analysts previously told Decrypt. What’s more, massive acquisitions of the token via corporate treasury buys and ETH ETF inflows have had a substantial deflationary impact on Ethereum’s tokenomics.

“ETH has particularly explosive dynamics going on,” Greg Magadini, director of derivatives at Amberdata, said in a note shared with Decrypt. Magadini favorably compared Ethereum to the iPhone, analogizing the growing ecosystem of goods and services built on the network’s smart contracts to Apple’s now-ubiquitous App Store.

But all that momentum has not been enough to push ETH into uncharted price territory—at least not yet. The notoriously slow-reacting cryptocurrency has struggled to surge to new highs, even as rival tokens continue to break records in the ongoing bull market.