Massive Liquidations Push Ethereum Higher as the Nearing Merge Boosts Sentiment

cryptonews.com:

Liquidations of leveraged short positions in Ethereum’s native token ETH surged over the weekend along with a strong move above the key USD 1,300 price level as sentiment in the ETH market improved markedly.

Per data from the derivatives tracking site Coinglass, liquidations of leveraged ETH shorts reached USD 179.4m on Saturday, the highest level of liquidations in more than three months. The weekend spike in liquidations came as ETH crossed the USD 1,300 barrier and established itself around USD 1,350.

The strong move was followed by another jump in short liquidations on Monday, as the price of ETH flirted with the USD 1,500 level for the first time since June 12. At the time of writing (10:10 UTC), USD 113m in ETH shorts had already been liquidated across crypto exchanges since midnight UTC time.

The bullish moves for ETH came as ‘the Merge’ – Ethereum’s transition from the proof-of-work (PoW) to the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism – moved closer, with September 19 now officially proposed as the tentative Merge date.

However, some argue that the Merge may be pushed yet again, depending on the market conditions. Martin Hiesboeck, Head of Blockchain and Crypto Research at digital trading platform Uphold, commented in an email to Cryptonews.com that,

"Ethereum developers came out with a timeline for The Merge that seems more credible than anything we have seen so far, namely several steps leading up to the week of September 19. We remain skeptical, and if the overall markets don’t improve, the launch could be pushed back further still."

Nonetheless, the news that the highly anticipated event is inching closer has led to increased optimism in the Ethereum community, which also coincided with bullish price moves from