Litecoin (LTC) price rallied to a 14-day peak of $88 on April 26, with highly-leveraged SHORT traders now at risk of massive liquidation losses.
Crypto investors hedging against a post-Halving crash has seen prominent Proof of Work (PoW) coins like BTC, DOGE and BCH struggle for momentum this week.
But in an interesting turn of events Litecoin price bucked that trend on April 26, soaring 3% and hitting a 14-day peak of $88. With this move, LTC added $195 million to its market capitalization.
Zooming out, LTC price has now increased 27% in the second-half of April. With another 10% bounce, it could reach a new 30-day peak above the $100 milestone.
However, early market signals suggest the LTC price rally has been majorly driven by speculative traders leaning aggressively bullish in the derivatives markets.
In the derivative markets Litecoin bulls have been applying unusual levels of leverage in overwhelming expectations of another leg-up towards the $100 milestone.
Coinglass’ Liquidation Map data, which shows the value of leveraged futures contracts active at key LTC price levels, further affirms this bullish Litecoin price outlook.
As seen below, the number of LTC LONG leverage positions has now exceeded the SHORTs by a noticeable margin, signaling the derivatives traders have overwhelming expectations of more price upside.
LTC short-traders are now at risk of losing $15.6 million in potential liquidations if price surge another 10% to reclaim $97 territory. Meanwhile in comparison, the bulls have mounted leveraged long positions worth over $18 million around the current prices.
Given that the long leverage positions have exceeded the short contracts by over $3 million, Litecoin bulls are likely to apply more pressure to drive prices towards $100 in the coming days.
Ibrahim Ajibade Ademolawa is a seasoned research analyst with a background in Commercial Banking and Web3 startups, specializing in DeFi and TradFi analysis. He holds a B.A. in Economics and is pursuing an MSc in Blockchain.