Ethereum Shorts Lead $391M Crypto Liquidations As Price Rallies 15%

Crypto liquidations topped $392 million over the last 24 hours as the wider market rose 9.5% above $1.06 trillion.

What Happened: According to data from CoinGlass, Ethereum ETH/USD saw the largest liquidations on Wednesday. ETH recorded $172 million in liquidations, of which $130 million were shorts.

The single largest liquidation order took place on Huobi on an ETH/USD trading pair valued at $2.26 million. 

The largest number of shorts were liquidated over a four-hour period when the crypto asset surged from $1,428 to $1,659. At press time, ETH was trading at $1,643, gaining 15% in the last day, as per data from Benzinga Pro.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin BTC/USD saw $121 million liquidation with short traders seeing the most pain.  BTC was trading at $23,155 at the time of writing, gaining 9.6% over the last 24 hours.

Ethereum Classic ETC/USD recorded $35 million liquidations after gaining 31% over 24 hours. Like the top two cryptocurrencies, traders with ETC-short positions were far worse off. At press time, ETC was trading at $32.95.

“The FOMC decision provided optimism that the end of tightening is in sight and that triggered a nice rally for risky assets that helped elevate cryptos,” said Edward Moya, a senior market analyst with OANDA, in a Wednesday note seen by Benzinga.