Coinalyze data showed that traders betting on Bitcoin Cash (BCH) lost the largest amount in more than two years amid the price rally to the $320 level last week.
Longs and longs cumulatively lost more than $25 million in BCH-tracked futures contracts, which may have contributed to the sudden rally. Shorts refer to bets against an asset, while longs are bets that prices will go up.
As of Monday, financing rates have fell negative Across all exchanges that list BCH futures contracts. Negative funding rates indicate that short traders are in control and willing to pay long traders to stay in their positions.
BCH traders pay funding rates of -0.05% every 8 hours in exchange fees, which means short interest in tokens is on the rise.
Liquidation refers to when an exchange aggressively closes a trader’s leveraged position due to a partial or total loss of the trader’s initial margin. It occurs when a trader is unable to meet the margin requirements for a leveraged position (fails to have enough funds to hold the position open).
Large liquidations can mark the local top or bottom of a sharp price move, which may allow traders to position themselves accordingly.
Last week’s moves likely came amid increased BCH trading volumes on South Korean exchanges — whose traders are notorious for irrational exuberance — and the launch of EDX Markets, a new exchange backed by traditional financial asset heavyweights Fidelity Digital, Charles Schwab and Citadel Securities. BCH is supported along with bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), and litecoin (LTC).