ETH $40.7M Short Wiped on Bitget: Bears Paid 85% of $70.4M
One Order, $40.7M: Bitget's ETH Short Gets Wiped
A single ETH short position worth $40.7 million was liquidated on Bitget on Tuesday, the largest individual liquidation across the market in the past 24 hours. The order was 16,034 ETH, cleared at $2,541.37. For context, the biggest single wipe on Monday was around $6.9 million. This one is nearly six times that size, and it shows how crowded the short side had become after ETH's push toward $2,550.
ETH shorts paid the price across the board. In the last 24 hours, short liquidations totaled $135.3 million versus $45.7 million for longs, a ratio of roughly three to one. On Bitget specifically, shorts accounted for 85% of the exchange's $70.4 million in total liquidations. The exchange ranked fourth globally for liquidation volume, behind Binance, OKX and Hyperliquid.
ETH Price and the Squeeze Behind It
ETH was trading around $2,504 at the time of writing, up 2.9% on the day, with a 24-hour range of $2,423 to $2,533. The $40.7 million wipe happened as price pushed toward the upper end of that range, which is the mechanics of a short squeeze: rising price forces leveraged shorts to cover, and each cover bid pushes price a little higher.
Open interest tells the same story. ETH OI stood at $24.5 billion, up 2.57% in 24 hours, with Binance adding 3.77% to reach $6.07 billion, a 24.75% share. Funding rates have turned positive on Binance and OKX at 0.01%, a sign that long positioning is being paid for again. Two smaller venues, Gate and HTX, still sit slightly negative, but the overall picture is a market where the short side is the one being punished.
What This Means for Traders
A $40.7 million single liquidation is a liquidity event, not just a number. It tells you where leverage was concentrated, and that zone is now partially cleared. When a short of this size is force-closed, the exchange absorbs the loss, the position is closed at market, and the price impact shows up as a brief spike. Traders watching ETH should note that the $2,533 level held as resistance after the wipe, and the next test is whether longs can push through on fresh volume.
The other side of the ledger: BTC also saw its own squeeze today, hitting $80,587 with shorts paying $212 million of the $272.5 million in BTC liquidations. But ETH's single-order wipe is the standout event, because it reveals where the biggest mis-positioned capital was sitting, and that was on Bitget's ETH book.
Conclusion
The takeaway is straightforward: leveraged shorts on ETH were the market's fuel this cycle. One $40.7 million order on Bitget was the largest single burn, and with funding back to positive and OI rebuilding, the squeeze may not be over. For anyone trading ETH, the $2,533 resistance and the funding rate are the two numbers to watch next.
Data as of 11:15 Beijing time, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit, Bitget, Gate, Hyperliquid and other major exchanges.