Bankrupt Celsius' Token Shoots Up 25% on Twitter-Driven Short Squeeze

A retail-driven short squeeze pushed bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network's CEL/USD native token up 25% on Monday.

What Happened: CEL rallied from $1.44 to a high of $1.82 over 24 hours, as per data from Benzinga Pro. The token was up 21.89% against Bitcoin BTC/USD and 19.9% against Ethereum ETH/USD at press time.

Crypto asset managers largely attributed the rally to a short-squeeze orchestrated by retail traders on Twitter Inc TWTR.

The asset’s price surge led to 300,000 CEL short positions closed on FTX, CoinDesk reported. Data from CoinGlass showed that $780,000 CEL short positions were liquidated over the last 24 hours.

“Since the circulating supply is very small, it is technically possible to create a short squeeze, although the impact in the overall market could be very limited and hard to sustain over a longer period of time,” Hashdex’s chief product and technology officer, Samir Kerbage, told CoinDesk.

Celsius declared bankruptcy last month after freezing withdrawals and halting deposits. More than 80% of CEL tokens are locked, making it a low-liquidity token and considerably harder for short traders to buy CEL on the market to cover their positions.

In June, CEL rallied 100% in a single-day in another retail driven short squeeze.