Crypto bears got it wrong again, losing $300 million in liquidations

Bears got it wrong again.

Bitcoin BTC$78,454.21 briefly tagged $80,594 early Monday, its highest print since Jan. 31, before pulling back to trade around $79,851 at the time of writing. The move triggered $370 million in total crypto liquidations over the past 24 hours, affecting 97,235 traders, according to CoinGlass data. Of that total, $301.93 million came from short positions.

Shorts were liquidated roughly four times as much as longs, indicating that bearish positioning was dominant going into the move. They were caught offside as the rally forced them to unwind positions at a loss.

Bitcoin alone accounted for $179 million of the wipeout, with ether traders contributing $95 million. The single-largest liquidation was an $11.77 million ETH/USDT short on Binance.

The squeeze is the second of its kind in two weeks. A similar setup on April 18 wiped out $593 million in shorts as bitcoin pushed past $77,000 on the back of reports of an Iran ceasefire.

The pattern is starting to look structural.

Funding rates on bitcoin perpetuals have been pinned negative for most of April, meaning shorts have been paying longs to stay short, and each time the price pushes higher, the same trade unwinds violently.

Other majors caught the bid. Ether climbed 2.3% to $2,368 and is up 2.2% on the week. XRP gained 2.1% to $1.42. BNB added 1.9% to $630. Solana rose 1.4% to $85.14. Dogecoin remains the standout performer, up 3.5% on the day and 14.3% on the week to $0.1119, extending the breakout that started last week alongside the year-high open interest in DOGE futures.

Net inflows into U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs reached $153.9 million last week, per SoSoValue. April pulled in $1.97 billion across the products, the highest monthly total since October 2025. Ether ETFs saw the opposite move, with $82.5 million in net outflows ending a three-week inflow streak.

FxPro analysts said in a note that bitcoin needs to consolidate above $85,000 to confirm the breakout.

"The rising price and the downward-sloping 200-day moving average are actively converging with an important long-term trend line at $83,600. Consolidation above this level could further encourage traders, but we would prefer to see consolidation above $85,000 first.

Derivatives Positioning

• Privacy-focused Zcash (ZEC), smart contract platform ether (ETH), and market leader bitcoin BTC$78,454.21 are the biggest open interest (OI) gainers over the past 24 hours, pointing to a broad pickup in derivatives activity.
• Bitcoin’s futures OI has climbed to 763.35K BTC, up sharply from the May 1 low of 707.24K BTC. The increase suggests renewed capital inflows into the market following April’s end-of-month de-risking. Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s 24-hour cumulative volume delta (CVD) has turned positive, meaning buyers are driving trading activity by placing more market orders than sellers, rather than using passive limit orders.
• ZEC is showing a similar setup. Open interest is hovering near a four-month high at 2.26 million tokens, accompanied by one of the strongest CVD readings among major tokens. Funding rates are also positive at around 7%, indicating a bias toward long positioning.
• Ethereum’s futures OI has risen to 14.17 million ETH, the highest level since April 18. Like Bitcoin, it is backed by positive funding rates and a positive 24-hour CVD, suggesting sustained demand from leveraged longs.
• Not all markets look as balanced. Privacy coin monero (XMR) and M$2.7117 appear overheated, with signs of overcrowded bullish positioning. Funding rates in these markets have surged above 60%, raising the risk of long squeezes if momentum stalls.
• Options markets, however, are signaling relative calm. Annualized thirty-day implied volatility for both bitcoin and ether has remained subdued for over a month, consistent with a steady, grind-higher rally. Ethereum’s volatility index (EVIV) is now approaching the 55% level, a zone that has acted as a floor multiple times since 2024, making it a key level to watch for a potential pickup in volatility.
• On Deribit, put skews in bitcoin and ether have weakened notably compared to a month ago. This shift suggests reduced demand for downside protection and increased appetite for upside exposure via call options as prices continue to rise.

Token Talk

• One of the key winners of the CLARITY Act yield compromise appears to be real-world asset tokens. The compromise would see firms restructure reward programs from a “buy and hold,” to a “buy and use model.”
• That, combined with growing regulatory clarity around tokenized real-world assets, has helped drive a rally in RWA tokens, with Ondo Finance's ONDO leading gains.
• It’s up 11% over the past 24 hours, breaking above its reported 90-day trading range as investors turned back to tokenized real-world assets. Tokens including TRU$0.001363, and PENDLE are also up.
• Ondo’s total value locked stands at $3.57 billion, with a market value of $1.5 billion according to DeFiLlama data. The rally also comes over broadening interest in real-world asset tokenization, with more than $30.9 billion tokenized according to RWA.xyz data.
• The move came after several recent developments for the project. Ondo Finance tapped Broadridge Financial Solutions to add proxy voting and filings access for more than 250 tokenized stocks and ETFs just this week.