#ake Here’s the takeaway: leverage hasn’t followed this rally.
I lined up the last 8 funding-rate readings: 0.50, 0.50, 0.50, 1.47, 0.89, 0.92, 0.97, and then back down to 0.50. It spiked in the middle, then came back down.
What really made me pause wasn’t the price. It was open interest: down 3.6% over 12 hours.
Price is rising, while leverage is retreating. These two numbers shouldn’t be moving like this.
The funding rate is positive, so longs are paying shorts. But 0.50 bp is incredibly low—just 0.50 basis points every 8 hours, meaning it costs almost nothing to hold a long position.
Such low costs tell us two things: people holding positions aren’t in a hurry, and nobody is willing to pay even a little extra to get in ahead of the pack.
I checked the aggressive buy/sell ratio: 0.8959. Sellers were more aggressive in the market orders.
Price is rising, but aggressive sellers are still in the lead. Honestly, I had to look at this combination twice before I could accept it.
For context, here are the numbers on both sides: the overall long/short ratio is 1.55, and the large-trader long/short ratio is 1.51—40% of large-trader accounts are short.
Price and open interest are moving in opposite directions.
Price is up 4.80% over 24 hours, while open interest is down 3.6% over 12 hours.
I calculated the turnover: $14.22M in notional open interest and $198.84M in trading volume over a day—that's 14 times. In other words, the same position changed hands fourteen times that day.
Trading volume was 7 times higher than the day before, but the positions didn't stick around.
Volume came in; traders left.
Longs are paying, but at 0.50 bp, the cost is too low to be a meaningful burden.
Who's feeling more pain? I can't say.
What I can say is this: open interest fell while the price rose 4.8%. This rally wasn't driven by new money coming in; it was driven by positions changing hands.
I wouldn't chase it by going long—the rally's staying power is questionable if nobody's adding to their positions. I wouldn't short it either: the funding rate hasn't turned negative, and shorts haven't gained an edge.
Just making a note of it.
What I'm unsure about is how open interest is being measured.
I accept the 3.6% drop over 12 hours, but I can't tell whether longs or shorts closed their positions. Either could cause open interest to fall, but the implications are completely different.
Also, 14 times turnover seems extremely high. I'm not sure whether market-making or wash trading accounts for some of it. I haven't checked, so I'll just leave that here.
One more number: a $50,000 market order can push the price up 0.52% or knock it down 0.69%.
That's what the market looks like. You can decide how to read it.
The above is just a record of my market observations and does not constitute investment advice. Contracts are leveraged: leverage amplifies both gains and losses.