Sui (SUI) rose by 6% overnight, becoming the biggest gainer among the top 100 coins by market capitalization, per CoinGecko.
This morning’s market winners also included Near Protocol (NEAR) which recorded a 6% rise since yesterday and Toncoin (TON) up 3% during the same period. Meme coin Shiba Inu (SHIB) also saw modest gains of 3%.
The top two tokens by market cap Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) were trading slightly lower.
BTC briefly dropped below $26,000 yesterday and was down 0.2% in the last 24 hours to last trade at $26,030.
ETH declined by 1.3% overnight as the second largest crypto traded at $1,644 at press time.
SUI retraces last week’s highs
Last week, SUI surged by more than 20% from $0.47 to a peak of $0.57, thanks to a cash boost by the Sui Foundation.
The Sui Foundation, the development team behind the Sui blockchain, announced a $900,000 developer grant to 16 projects in the ecosystem on August 18.
The price retraced over the weekend, but broke above last week’s highs early on Wednesday to reach a new weekly high of $0.58.
This morning’s price action was accompanied by a wave of liquidations and increased spot volumes on South Korean exchange Upbit.
The token saw its highest level of liquidations in a month, totaling $2.61 million. Of these liquidations, $1.73 million were short orders, according to Coinglass data.
This suggests that a short squeeze may have played a hand in the latest bullish move.
A short squeeze occurs when an asset’s price rises sharply due to a large number of short sellers being forced to buy back their positions.
SUI was also the top traded altcoin on Binance futures with volumes higher than XRP and SOL at nearly $800 million, suggesting that Binance derivatives volumes contributed to yesterday’s price action.
SUI was one of the top-traded tokens on Upbit since yesterday, too.
In the last 24 hours, Upbit commanded the majority share of SUI’s spot trading volume on crypto exchanges.
Notably, SUI was the second most traded coin on Upbit with 24-hour volumes higher than Bitcoin at $61.57 million and only behind XRP.
This is not the first time this year that the market has witnessed such a short squeeze, accompanied by volume spikes on Upbit.
It was seen previously with Bitcoin Cash, Aptos, and 1inch token.
SUI was last trading at $0.57, per Coingecko data.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.
