Bearish zcash bets hit record high as privacy token’s price crashes
Liquidations were small relative to the size of the decline, pointing to spot selling rather than a leverage cascade, while open interest in ZEC futures climbed to a record high in token terms as traders crowded into the slide from the short side.
What to know:
- Zcash plunged after a newly disclosed vulnerability in the privacy token’s Orchard pool raised doubts about the integrity of the token supply.
- Despite a drop that neared 50% over 24 hours, futures liquidations were relatively limited and open interest hit a record high, indicating the selloff was led by spot selling while traders piled into new bearish bets.
- With ZEC up roughly 490% over the past year and heavily shorted, a stabilization in price could trigger a short squeeze, even as uncertainty lingers over whether the bug was ever exploited.
That is remarkably small for a token whose price halved, suggesting the selling came mostly from spot held tokens rather than a futures-driven move. Only about 14% of zcash’s leveraged positions got wiped out; the number would have been far larger if a leverage cascade had driven the slide.
In comparison, about $335 million in bitcoin -tracked futures were liquidated over the same window even though the largest cryptocurrency fell only a few percent. Ether slipped a similar amount and liquidated $278 million.
Open interest — the total value of unsettled futures bets — rose to a record high in ZEC terms, suggesting traders opened new positions rather than closing them.
The long/short ratio, the number of traders betting on an increase versus a decline, shows those positions skewed bearish. On Binance, the ratio sat below 1 across retail investors at 0.77, whale accounts at 0.80 and whale positions at 0.85. Traders on OKX were more bearish, with retail at 0.67 and whale accounts at 0.72. Only Bybit’s retail traders leaned long, at 1.49.
