$300 million liquidated after SEC approves Ethereum spot ETF

The majority of the top 20 digital assets by market capitalization (excluding stablecoins) saw losses of around 3%. Bitcoin and Ethereum, the top two digital assets by market capitalization, fell to $67,051 and $3,671, respectively.

Some market analysts claim that the approval of the spot ETH ETF is a 'semi-truth' event. Investors looking forward to the approval have priced in the SEC's approval. Over the past week, the price of ETH has increased by more than 20%.

Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant, noted:

'It appears the market has pre-priced Ethereum spot ETF approval. Grayscale's ETHE discount to ETH has narrowed significantly over the past few days. The same thing happened between GBTC and Bitcoin as the Bitcoin Spot ETF is about to be approved.'

Some experts also point to the delay in launching ETFs as one of the reasons for the gloomy market performance. The SEC has only approved forms 19b-4 and has not yet granted trading authority, which would require approval of S-1 registration statements, although this is just a formality.

Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart explains: 'This is just a 19b-4 approval. S-1 documents also need to be approved and this will take time. We expect it to take a few weeks but it could take longer.'

Nearly 300 million USD was liquidated

More than 79,000 traders have suffered losses of nearly $300 million in the past 24 hours due to poor market performance.

Long ETH traders, who expected the ETF news to send the digital asset soaring, took the brunt of these losses totaling around $107 million. The largest single liquidation was a $12.4 million Long ETH order on the Binance exchange.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin traders lost about $75 million during the same period.

Nghia Nam

Isabella Humphrey

Update 25 May 2024