In the last 24 hours, over 60,000 traders were liquidated with a value of $224 million.
Crypto markets rallied on Friday morning after Thursday’s lower-than-expected unemployment numbers eased U.S. recession concerns.
Bitcoin (BTC) rose 6% to $61,000, while Ethereum (ETH) gained 8% to trade at $2,627. Polkadot (DOT) rose 2% and Solana (SOL) gained 1%.
Despite the optimistic price development of the last three days, many analysts urge caution.
Ryan Lee, chief analyst at Bitget Research, cited several factors that could drive the rally, including U.S. unemployment numbers, a new law in Russia legalizing cryptocurrency mining signed by President Vladimir Putin, and Morgan Stanley’s approval for its 15,000 financial advisors to recommend Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to their clients starting August 7.
“This type of holding structure cannot support a complete market reversal or recovery,” Lee warned in a market analysis.
According to on-chain analytics firm Santiment, Bitcoin and Ethereum were “unsurprisingly” the focus of the crowd.
“Bitcoin briefly broke above the $62,600 mark, up 25% in just over three days. Look for a sudden increase in excitement around potential BTC prices of $70,000-$75,000 or ETH prices of $3,000-$3,500 as respective top signals,” Santiment wrote.
In the past 24 hours, about 60,000 leveraged traders have been liquidated, with total liquidations totaling $228.64 million, according to CoinGlass data. This includes $78 million in BTC short positions and over $30 million in ETH liquidations. Short positions refer to bets that the price of an asset will go down, while long positions are bets that prices will go up.
Bitcoin ETFs raise nearly $200 million
Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) saw net inflows of $194 million on Thursday, up 330% from Wednesday’s $45.14 million inflows, according to data from Farside Investors.
On Thursday, BlackRock’s IBIT recorded inflows of $157.6 million, bringing the total since launch to $20.3 billion. WisdomTree’s BTCW followed with inflows of $118.8 million – the highest since its debut.
Meanwhile, spot Ethereum ETFs saw slight net outflows of $2.9 million on Thursday. Outflows from Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust (ETHE) slowed to $19.8 million.
Rally on the stock markets
US stock markets are expected to open higher as investors try to regain lost ground following the sell-off earlier this week.
The Labor Department reported Thursday that about 233,000 people filed for initial unemployment benefits during the week of August 3. The number is 17,000 lower than the previous week and below the Dow Jones analysts’ forecast of 240,000.
Futures tied to the S&P 500 index rose 0.5%, while Nasdaq futures gained 0.6%. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were 0.2% higher.
