Home » Markets » Ethereum ETF approval sees minor decline in broader market, $400M in liquidations

Ethereum ETF approval sees minor decline in broader market, $400M in liquidations

May. 24, 2024

Crypto market tumbles as SEC approves Ethereum ETFs, traders suffer $400M in losses.

Golden Ethereum ETF symbol with teal gradient.

After the dust settled on the craze around the SEC’s approval of Ethereum ETFs, the crypto market saw high levels of volatility. Data from CoinGecko shows that the top 20 digital assets (by market cap, excluding stablecoins) saw losses of roughly 3% each.

Broadly, Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) saw declines of 3.4% and 3.5%, respectively. BTC is now playing at $67.3K, with Ethereum cruising down at the street at $3.6K. At the time of writing, market-wide liquidations saw around $400 million in outflows.

The market’s subdued performance resulted in over 107,000 crypto traders suffering losses exceeding $400 million. According to Coinglass liquidation data, ETH long traders, who expected the ETF news to boost the digital asset’s price, bore the brunt of these losses, totaling around $107 million.

The largest single liquidation was a $12.4 million long bet on Ethereum on the Binance exchange. Bitcoin traders also lost approximately $75 million during the same period.

Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant, noted that the market had already priced in the Ethereum spot ETF approval, evidenced by the narrowing discount between Grayscale’s ETHE and ETH in the days leading up to the decision.

https://twitter.com/jjcmoreno/status/1793706458393002203

This analysis suggests that ETH ETF approval was a “sell-the-news” event, with investors who anticipated the approval positioning accordingly. Notably, the past week saw ETH’s price rising by roughly 21%, with the Ethereum futures market hitting a one-year high of 3.6 million ETH.

Muted market performance was also attributed to the delayed launch of the ETFs. While the SEC has approved the ETFs, they have yet to grant clearance for their launch, which requires an approved S-1 filing, though this is considered more of a formality. Bloomberg’s ETF analyst James Seyffart explains that the S-1 approval process could take a couple of weeks or longer.

Disclaimer