$KORU The current quote is 19.24, and in the past 24 hours it has fallen by almost 9%. But the funding rate is positive—0.00029391—meaning the longs are paying the shorts.
This is the core contradiction. The price is dropping, yet the financing cost is being borne by the longs. This is unusual. In a typical bearish move, if bearish sentiment is strong, the funding rate usually flips negative, with shorts crowding in and paying longs. Now it’s the opposite, which suggests a significant portion of longs are still holding on, using positive funding to maintain their positions and fight the downward trend. Open interest is around 2.39 million, implying a sizable amount of long inventory.
My view is that this structure is fragile. The longs are bleeding out. On one side, they’re floating at a loss; on the other, they must pay funding fees every day—double draining. This will pressure two types of players: (1) long retail traders who can’t hold on may be forced to liquidate, which would intensify the sell-off; (2) arbitrage-driven institutions, which short spot by borrowing it, while simultaneously going long in the perpetuals to collect funding—thereby locking in the downside pressure on spot. The market is basically playing a game of who blinks first.
What’s the strongest counter-evidence? If the price here (or lower) suddenly stabilizes on heavy volume, and the funding rate rapidly drops—possibly even turning negative—then it would indicate the shorts are starting to take profit in large scale, or that fresh buy pressure is stepping in forcefully, reversing the long/short cost structure. There are only two things to watch: whether price can effectively hold and stop probing lower, and whether the funding rate direction changes.
The second-order effects have already occurred. The longs paying positive funding are currently the most painful group. Their continuous bleed provides steady returns for arbitrage funds. If this state persists, liquidity in the derivatives market will tilt toward the short side, because holding short positions lets you collect funding fees. That attracts even more capital to open shorts, further suppressing the price.
The invalidation conditions are very clear: the price stabilizes and rebounds, and the funding rate weakens at the same time. If both signals show up together, it means the longs’ resistance has been effective, or that short-side momentum has run out.
So in terms of action, it’s not the time to jump in. Go long? Before the funding rate turns negative, the cost is too high. Go short? The price has already fallen by almost 9%, so the risk-reward of chasing shorts is poor—and once funding starts entering to push a rebound, shorts will also get squeezed. The most rational choice is to wait. Wait for the moment when the funding rate swings from positive sharply into negative; that may signal the longs finally surrender, short sentiment reaches its peak, and a bottom in the short term becomes more likely.
For the aggressive, you can try shorting with a small position now, but you must strictly respect your stop-loss—betting that long-side sentiment keeps collapsing.
Trading tag: #TradFi #链上美股 #KORU
Where do you think this thesis is most likely to be wrong?
This is the core contradiction. The price is dropping, yet the financing cost is being borne by the longs. This is unusual. In a typical bearish move, if bearish sentiment is strong, the funding rate usually flips negative, with shorts crowding in and paying longs. Now it’s the opposite, which suggests a significant portion of longs are still holding on, using positive funding to maintain their positions and fight the downward trend. Open interest is around 2.39 million, implying a sizable amount of long inventory.
My view is that this structure is fragile. The longs are bleeding out. On one side, they’re floating at a loss; on the other, they must pay funding fees every day—double draining. This will pressure two types of players: (1) long retail traders who can’t hold on may be forced to liquidate, which would intensify the sell-off; (2) arbitrage-driven institutions, which short spot by borrowing it, while simultaneously going long in the perpetuals to collect funding—thereby locking in the downside pressure on spot. The market is basically playing a game of who blinks first.
What’s the strongest counter-evidence? If the price here (or lower) suddenly stabilizes on heavy volume, and the funding rate rapidly drops—possibly even turning negative—then it would indicate the shorts are starting to take profit in large scale, or that fresh buy pressure is stepping in forcefully, reversing the long/short cost structure. There are only two things to watch: whether price can effectively hold and stop probing lower, and whether the funding rate direction changes.
The second-order effects have already occurred. The longs paying positive funding are currently the most painful group. Their continuous bleed provides steady returns for arbitrage funds. If this state persists, liquidity in the derivatives market will tilt toward the short side, because holding short positions lets you collect funding fees. That attracts even more capital to open shorts, further suppressing the price.
The invalidation conditions are very clear: the price stabilizes and rebounds, and the funding rate weakens at the same time. If both signals show up together, it means the longs’ resistance has been effective, or that short-side momentum has run out.
So in terms of action, it’s not the time to jump in. Go long? Before the funding rate turns negative, the cost is too high. Go short? The price has already fallen by almost 9%, so the risk-reward of chasing shorts is poor—and once funding starts entering to push a rebound, shorts will also get squeezed. The most rational choice is to wait. Wait for the moment when the funding rate swings from positive sharply into negative; that may signal the longs finally surrender, short sentiment reaches its peak, and a bottom in the short term becomes more likely.
For the aggressive, you can try shorting with a small position now, but you must strictly respect your stop-loss—betting that long-side sentiment keeps collapsing.
Trading tag: #TradFi #链上美股 #KORU
Where do you think this thesis is most likely to be wrong?