Short sellers were relentless on the tokens associated with storage protocols Filecoin (FIL) and Storj (STORJ) over the weekend, with record shorts being placed FIL.
FIL is down 28% over the past five days, with STORJ down 20%. Both have underperformed ether (ETH), which is down roughly 10% during the same time period.
Data from CoinGlass points to record liquidations on long positions for FIL and STORJ as last week came to a close.
Nearly $5.7 million long FIL positions were liquidated on Dec. 16, according to CoinGlass, while $365,000 in STORJ long positions were also liquidated. Internet Computer (ICP), a similar protocol, also had $500,000 in long positions liquidated.
Open Interest data from CoinAlyze suggests the worst is yet to come, with an 11% jump in open interest during the last 24 hours to about $52 million. Continued negative funding rates indicate that this money is coming in to short.
Traders might be questioning the utility of storage protocols, which have a massive – and growing – storage capacity but no obvious use case to utilize it.
Filecoin says it has a capacity of 15.34 exbibytes, or 17.6 million terabytes, but lists storage of OpenSea non-fungible tokens (NFT) as one of its primary clients, raising questions about how much of its storage network is truly utilized.
On OpenSea, monthly volume dropped to $159 million from around $4.8 billion at the start of the year, a decline of about 97% and nearly reflective of Filecoin’s decline from $236, when it listed on April 1, to $3 today.