ETH Jumps to $2,499: Shorts Pay 85% of $116M Wipe
ETH reclaims $2,500 as shorts unwind
ETH climbed back above $2,500 early Thursday, last trading near $2,499 on Binance and $2,499.05 on OKX, up 4.3% in 24 hours. The move erased most of the drop that had pushed the pair to a $2,367 low on Wednesday. What stands out is who paid for the reversal: shorts.
Shorts carried 85% of the $116M liquidation bill
Across tracked exchanges, $115.9M of ETH positions were liquidated in 24 hours, with shorts accounting for $99.1M, roughly 85%. The heaviest flush clustered in the final hours of Wednesday Beijing time. A short worth about $3.76M was closed on OKX near $2,517, and Binance cleared multiple large ETH shorts just above $2,530 as price probed that level. Longs, by comparison, paid only about $16.8M of the total.
That split reads as short covering, not as a broad risk-on bid aimed at ETH specifically. Squeezes of this shape tend to run fast and stall fast once the bearish flow that built the positioning is exhausted.
OI grows 4.1% but funding stays cold
Open interest across venues rose 4.1% to $25.4B, so positions did come back in after the earlier flush. The build is uneven. Binance still holds the largest OI at $5.75B, up 4.15% in a day; Bybit added 8.77%, Gate 5.79%, and smaller venue Aster grew 24.15%. Funding rates meanwhile sit near zero on every major exchange, around 0.01% on Binance, OKX, Bybit and Gate.
Near-zero funding combined with a rising price and shrinking short interest is the classic covering signature. ETH is recovering because bears stepped aside, not because leveraged longs are paying up to hold exposure. If fresh long demand were driving this, funding would have ticked positive well before price reached $2,500.
What to watch next
Resistance sits at the $2,518-2,519 highs printed during the flush, with the $2,530 zone just above, where several large shorts were wiped. A clean break there with volume would open the door to the late-August range above. On the downside, $2,430-$2,450 marks where the recent OI build started; a retest with funding still flat would look more like range trading than a trend change. For now the derivatives picture favors continuation only if longs step in and funding finally turns positive.
Data as of 02:28 Beijing time on September 4, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit, Hyperliquid, Gate, Bitget and other major exchanges.