Ethereum Slips Below $1,900 as $1.84B Long Liquidation Sweeps Crypto Markets

Ethereum News

Crypto markets absorbed their largest single-day liquidation event since early February, with roughly $1.84 billion in leveraged positions wiped out over the past 24 hours as Ethereum broke below $1,900 and Bitcoin slid under $66,000. The flush was almost entirely a long unwind: bullish bets accounted for $1.66 billion of the carnage, while shorts surrendered only $180 million. Ether longs alone absorbed $475.73 million in losses, the second-largest tally behind Bitcoin's $883.66 million. The cascade ripped through the top of the order book, leaving the broader altcoin complex bruised and traders questioning whether the market had finally found a clearing level.

The damage was unevenly distributed across venues. Binance handled $748 million of the total, or roughly 41% of the cascade, of which 89% were long positions. Hyperliquid processed $314 million with 94% on the long side, while Bybit logged $247 million at 93% longs. The single largest forced exit was a $59.67 million BTC-USDT long unwound on HTX, a position large enough to reshape the order book on a smaller venue. Aggregate taker flow showed $65.39 billion in sells against $60.16 billion in buys, with sellers acting as the marginal force throughout the session.

More troubling for bulls, Bitcoin open interest climbed from roughly 759,000 BTC to 788,600 BTC during the drawdown — a signal that fresh short positions were opening on top of the long flush rather than the cascade finding a clean reset. Whale accounts on OKX have flipped to a 0.54 long-short ratio, an extremely bear-market reading, while retail traders on Binance, OKX and Bybit remain stubbornly long at ratios of 2.22, 2.01 and 1.58. That positioning split — sophisticated capital fading the bounce while retail refuses to capitulate — has historically preceded additional downside before durable lows print.

Cutting against the bearish tape, Standard Chartered's head of digital asset research Geoff Kendrick argued that Strategy's $2.5 million Bitcoin sale — its first since 2022 — marks a structural turning point in favor of Ethereum. In a client note, Kendrick observed that Ether registered one of its largest daily outperformance spikes against Bitcoin since 2024 in the wake of the disclosure. Since January 2024, ETH has posted better daily gains than BTC on falling days only 23 times, making the rotation statistically notable. Kendrick frames the move as the start of a sustained reversal in the ETH/BTC pair.

Kendrick's model points to the ETH/BTC ratio drifting back toward 0.04 by year-end — a level last touched in September — implying Ether could rally roughly 41% to $2,700 even if Bitcoin holds near $67,300. The bank previously published a $4,000 year-end Ethereum target, contending that current pricing fails to reflect improving network fundamentals. Kendrick has likened the disconnect to Amazon's drawdown during the dot-com unwind, when business performance decoupled from share price for an extended stretch. The ETH/BTC ratio peaked above 0.042 in August 2024 as ETH approached its prior all-time high near $5,000.

Beyond the ratio call, Kendrick highlighted a structural advantage that separates Ether-focused treasury companies from their Bitcoin-buying counterparts: staking rewards. Firms accumulating ETH can earn yield by participating in the network's consensus mechanism, generating revenue that reduces the need to sell holdings to fund operations. He also flagged Wall Street's growing appetite for stablecoins as modern settlement rails and tokenization as new market plumbing — both flows that route value through Ethereum's base layer. Combined with persistently strong on-chain activity, the thesis is that ETH is priced for a sector its underlying network is already outgrowing.

Spot ETH trades at $1,867.35, down 6.27% on the day with the broader downtrend intact. Immediate support sits at $1,827, with deeper bids clustered at $1,770 and $1,619 should the flush continue. Resistance starts at $1,875, then $1,941 and $2,055. RSI at 22.54 signals a deeply oversold candlestick structure that often precedes mean-reversion bounces, but the MACD remains decisively bearish. A reclaim of $1,941 would invalidate the bear case and open a path to $2,055; a daily close below $1,770 would expose the $1,619 zone and confirm trend continuation.