Traders betting against the cryptocurrency market lost more than $450 million in the past 24 hours as major cryptocurrencies surged in one of their most impressive gains in about a year.
According to CoinGlass data, short traders have lost over the past day close $457 million on major centralized exchanges. Crypto exchange OKX took the lion’s share of these liquidations at over $241 million, followed by Binance at $116 million.
In addition to short traders, long traders were also caught off guard as more than $108 million in long positions were liquidated. Thus, the total value of liquidated positions over the past 24 hours has reached more than $727 million, a level not seen since November 8, when the problem occurred on the FTX crypto exchange.
According to data from CoinGlass, the bulk of the liquidations took place in the last 12 hours, with the value of liquidated positions reaching $514 million.
Bitcoin-tracking futures saw $23 million in liquidation both short and long last day, while Ethereum-linked futures saw more than $16.8 million liquidation. Tracked futures Solana, DogeCoin, and Aptos also saw close to $3 million worth of liquidations.
The record level of liquidations occurred as major cryptocurrencies broke through key resistance levels and continued to rally. Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, crossed the $21,000 mark in the past 24 hours, while Ethereum reached around $1,600. Over the past day, both coins have increased by about 10%.
Meanwhile, there is also a sharp increase in activity in the digital currency futures market. As Crypto Quant’s Kee Young Jun noted, buyers entered the market early Saturday morning, buying about $4 billion worth of bitcoin futures.
Although a number of factors may have contributed to the recent crypto rally, the crypto market managed to gain momentum after new data released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Labor indicated a decline in inflation.
As expected, annual inflation eased to 6.5% in December from 7.1% in November. Inflation fell 0.1% month-on-month, compared with a 0.1% increase last month. The core CPI, which excludes fluctuations in food and energy prices, fell to 5.7% from 6% in November.
Lower inflation is generally seen as a positive for risk assets such as cryptocurrency, as it puts pressure on the US Federal Reserve to slow interest rate hikes. Over the past year, the Fed and other central banks around the world have been aggressively raising interest rates, creating an unfavorable environment for cryptocurrencies and other risk assets.
