ETH Rejects $2,533, Drops 4.4%: 1H Liquidations 99% Longs

ETH ran into a wall at $2,533 and got knocked back. In the early hours of August 26 Beijing time, Ether fell to around $2,421, a 4.4% round trip from that high. At the same moment, the last hour of network-wide liquidations totaled $115 million, and 99% of it was long positions getting force-closed.

ETH Rejects $2,533: A $6.58M Long Gets Wiped

Ether spent the past 24 hours swinging both ways. The peak near $2,533 printed late on August 25, then price turned down. Binance and OKX both quote ETH around $2,421 now, down 2.3% on the day, with the 24-hour low at roughly $2,413. Minutes before this snapshot, a $6.58 million ETH long was liquidated on Binance at $2,408. Earlier in the cycle, a $40.7 million short got wiped on Bitget during the squeeze phase. Those two prints frame the whole move: shorts paid first, now longs are the ones covering.

99% of Last-Hour Liquidations Are Longs

The one-sidedness is the story. Network-wide, the 1-hour window shows $115 million liquidated with longs at 99.1%; the 4-hour window is 96.9% longs. ETH's own 24-hour liquidation total sits at $153.5 million, split almost evenly between longs ($77 million) and shorts ($76.4 million). That split says both sides took damage over the full day. But the recent hour is a different regime: as price fell from $2,533 toward the $2,413 low, stop cascades kept tripping longs who bought the breakout.

OI Shrinks Unevenly: Binance Trims, Gate Adds

ETH open interest fell 1.2% in 24 hours to $24.05 billion. The cuts are concentrated at Binance (-2.94%) and Hyperliquid (-5.51%), while Gate added 4.13%, MEXC +3.34% and KuCoin +2.09%. This is not a uniform deleveraging. Leverage is migrating from the biggest venues to smaller ones, which usually means longs are repositioning rather than exiting outright. Worth watching whether Binance OI stabilizes, because that is where the flush has been heaviest.

Flat Funding: No New Longs Paying to Stay

Funding is the clearest tell. Binance charges 0.0017% on ETH, OKX 0.0031%, and the volume-weighted market rate is roughly 0.0017%, basically flat. During a proper squeeze, funding runs well above 0.01% as bulls pay to keep positions. It has now collapsed to near zero, which means no fresh longs are willing to pay for upside. The read: ETH needs funding to reheat and open interest to stop falling before another attempt at $2,533. Until then, the pullback is likely to keep digesting breakout chasers.

Data as of 05:10 Beijing time, August 26, covering major exchanges including Binance, OKX, Bybit, Hyperliquid, Gate and Bitget.