Ether margin longs on Bitfinex climb as prices stall

Margin traders on Bitfinex are holding their biggest bullish bet on ether in months even as prices go nowhere: about 367,500 ETH in long positions versus roughly 9,000 ETH in shorts. That is according to Bitfinex's public margin statistics at 18:41 UTC on Saturday, as tracked by SwoleCharts. The snapshot above shows the latest prices, refreshed each time the site rebuilds.

The positioning

• Longs: 367,496 ETH, worth about $888 million — up about 1.4% in 24 hours and 29.7% over seven days, and the highest reading in at least 90 days.
• Shorts: 8,965 ETH, about $22 million. Shorts have nearly tripled in a week from a low base, so the long-to-short ratio has eased to about 41 to 1.
• For scale: on 11 October, Crypto Briefing described 283,410 ETH of Bitfinex longs as the highest level in more than four years. Longs stood near 82,500 ETH in late August, while shorts spiked to a four-year high of between 73,000 and 101,000 ETH in late September before collapsing.

Margin positions are spot trades made with borrowed funds, not futures, so they are not counted in ether open interest.

Prices: a flat weekend

At about 18:40 UTC, CoinGecko data showed bitcoin near $81,480, ether near $2,416 and solana near $103.90, each within about 0.2% of where it traded 24 hours earlier. Bitcoin has held above $80,000 since its brief dip on Thursday, though Friday's session was rough for crypto stocks and spot ether ETFs lost $69.7 million — see our Friday market wrap.

How to read it

A crowded long book can cut both ways. Traders read steady accumulation as conviction, but borrowed positions can also be forced to sell if prices drop, which can deepen a decline. With shorts this small, there is also little fuel for a short squeeze. None of this is a price signal on its own; it shows how one group of leveraged traders is positioned. New to the asset? Start with what is Ethereum.