ETH $12.5M Short Wiped as 24H Shorts Pay $124.5M
ETH Short Wipe: A $12.5M Print on Binance
Ether traded near $2,506 on Wednesday evening Beijing time, up about 2% on the day, after a single Binance short position worth $12.5 million was liquidated around $2,546. The order covered 4,911.6 ETH and was the largest liquidation print across all venues in the last hour. Two more big shorts followed: a 2,625 ETH position at $6.77 million on the same exchange and a 15,000 ETH short at $3.81 million on OKX. All three were cleared as the price pushed away from the $2,430 low hit earlier in the session.
24H Shorts Paid $124.5M, But the Last Hour Flipped
Over the past 24 hours, ETH liquidations totaled $186 million, and shorts took 67% of that damage at $124.5 million. The picture flips when you shorten the window: across the whole market, the last hour saw $54.2 million liquidated and 97.2% of it was longs. That split describes the current tape well. Bears that piled in during the drop to $2,430 are getting cleaned out on the way up, while aggressive longs are still getting shaken at local highs. Two-sided churn, not a one-way move.
Funding at Zero: No Fresh Longs Yet
Funding rates tell the other half of the story. Binance charges 0.0092% for ETH, OKX 0.0083%, Bybit 0.01%, and Hyperliquid sits at 0.0005%. Gate is the only large venue in negative territory at -0.0055%. These are effectively zero-cost levels for holding either side. Open interest rose 1.98% to $25.0 billion, with Binance adding 3.09%. When a bounce is driven by short covering, funding stays flat and OI climbs slowly, which is exactly what the data shows. Leverage is rebuilding, but new directional money has not committed yet.
What to Watch Next
The immediate resistance is $2,566 on Binance and the $2,578 high from the last 24 hours. If shorts keep being forced out, a break above that zone would open room toward $2,600. For that move to hold, funding should flip firmly positive and OI growth needs to keep pace. If instead funding stays near zero while price stalls, this is a cover rally, not a trend change, and longs who chase here are the ones funding the next flush.
Data as of 18:36 Beijing time (10:36 UTC) on August 27, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit, Gate, Hyperliquid, Bitget and other major exchanges.