Celsius Token Rallies 100% Amid Short Squeeze

Short sellers of the Celsius CEL/USD token saw large-scale liquidations as the token surged on Monday.

What Happened: According to data from Benzinga Pro, CEL rallied 100% from $0.78 to an intra-day high of $1.56.

The massive rally was largely orchestrated by the community of CEL token holders attempting what market participants equated to a GameStop Corp. GME type of short squeeze.

The community planned to buy CEL on the FTX crypto exchange, move tokens to decentralized exchanges through MetaMask, and then set sell limit orders at the $100 price level.

CEL is the native token of the lending platform Celsius, which is currently in the midst of a liquidity crisis. The CEL token went into freefall shortly after the news spread.

“The biggest problem Celsius have currently seems to be their $1.5 billion position in stETH - 1 stETH is a claim on 1 ETH locked on the Beacon chain,” said GlobalBlock analyst Marcus Sotiriou in a note seen by Benzinga.

“At the moment, stETH is trading at a discount of more than 5% to ETH, which raises concerns that if clients try to redeem positions, Celsius will run out of liquid funds to pay them back.”

See Also: HOW TO SHORT BITCOIN

Price Action: According to data from Benzinga Pro, Bitcoin BTC/USD was trading at $21,133 at press time, gaining 1.9% over the last 24 hours. Ethereum ETH/USD was trading at $1,148, up 1.58% over the same period.