IRYS hit a low of 0.01168 on October 18 and a high of 0.11879 today—nearly a 10x gain in five days. Today’s daily candle alone is up more than 4x, from 0.02059 to 0.1154 (at 00:57 Beijing time). Binance futures trading volume today was $1.2 billion, 1,229 times the usual level. On the day AKE took off, it was 369 times the usual level; for RAVE, it was 161 times.
When a coin rises this much, the key question is: who’s buying? I looked into futures, Korean exchanges, and token unlocks.
▍First, a quick explainer: How to tell who’s driving the move
You only need to look at two things.
First, which is more expensive: futures or spot. If futures are much more expensive than spot, that means futures are driving the move; if they’re about the same, spot is keeping up.
Second, look at contract open interest in coin terms. When price rises and open interest increases, it means new money is opening positions; when price rises and open interest decreases, it means shorts are closing or getting liquidated. When shorts get liquidated, they are forced to buy back, which can push prices up very sharply, but once the liquidation is over, there is no fuel left.
▍The first half: Korean retail is buying
IRYS has no spot listing on Binance, but it does have KRW trading pairs on Korea’s Upbit and Bithumb. On Upbit, trading volume was only 270 million won on October 20, about $200,000; on the 21st and 22nd it was around 86 billion won per day; as of now today it has reached 400.8 billion won, nearly $300 million. A week ago nobody cared about it; now it is one of the hottest coins in Korea. Upbit has already added a price volatility alert for it.
Converted to USD, Upbit’s price is 0.1055, while Binance’s spot index is 0.1063—almost identical, with no kimchi premium. It’s not that Korea alone is pushing it up; the whole world is following.
During the same period, retail traders in futures kept going more and more short as the price rose. From October 21 to this afternoon, open interest in futures climbed from 113 million coins to 892 million, nearly 8x higher, while the share of accounts that were long fell from 71% to 30%. Every time the price rose a bit, more small accounts came in to open shorts.
▍The final squeeze: shorts are getting liquidated
From 23:10 Beijing time to 0:55, the price surged from 0.0458 to 0.1141, a 1.5x increase. Over the same period, futures open interest fell from 895 million coins to 729 million, down by 166 million. When open interest drops while price rises, that means shorts are closing or being liquidated.
The two sharpest moves: from 23:15 to 23:30, open interest dropped by 120 million coins at once; from 0:30 to 0:35, the price rose 25% in five minutes, and open interest fell by another 62 million coins.
So a large part of this rally came from shorts being forced to buy back, not entirely from new money entering.
Now futures are trading 3% above spot, and the funding rate has risen to +0.17% every 4 hours, so longs are paying very high interest. But the shorts haven’t been fully squeezed yet: 69% of accounts are still short, and futures open interest is 729 million coins, worth about $84 million at the current price.
▍The good side
First, the current price is above every historical trade. The previous all-time high was 0.0772 on May 15. Right now everyone holding the coin is in profit, so there is no trapped supply overhead.
Second, the move is not being driven by just one futures market. Besides the two Korean exchanges, Coinbase, OKX, and KuCoin all have spot markets, and Binance futures prices are calculated based on those spot markets.
Third, the float is not that large. Circulating supply is 2.567 billion coins, which at the current price gives a circulating market cap of about $300 million; including unlocked supply, the fully diluted valuation is about $1.15 billion.
▍Three things to be careful about
First, unlocks. The day after tomorrow, on October 25, 77.6 million coins will unlock, coming from the community and foundation. The real big one is on November 25: IRYS will have been live for a full year, and the team and investors’ locks expire. Third-party data shows this unlock is about 1.18 billion coins, with investors accounting for 54% and the team 40%. That is equivalent to 46% of the current circulating supply, worth about $136 million at current prices, and it is 32 days away.
Second, IRYS has already done this once in May. It ran up to 0.0772 on May 15, then closed the month at 0.0234, falling 70% in a month.
Third, historically, these one-day vertical pumps are mostly tops. I went through all Binance USDT-margined futures, including delisted ones, and found 62 cases since 2024: daily trading volume was more than 50 times normal, the price rose more than 100% that day, and trading volume ranked in the top 15 across the market.
If you bought at the close that day, the next day it would usually run another 28% intraday, but after 7 days it would usually be down 43%, with only 20% still up. In the 12 cases where the coin rose more than 2x in a day, it was usually down 65% after 7 days. Of the 4 coins that rose more than 3.8x in a single day—TAIKO, HIFI, NFP, and HYPER—the best was still only 65% of its value after 7 days, and the worst was down to 18%.
There are exceptions too. Among the 8 cases where Binance had no spot listing and the coin still rose more than 2x in a day, 3 later doubled again within 30 days: AKE, RAVE, and JELLYJELLY. But in that same group, the 7-day close was still usually down 65%.
▍How I’d look at it
First, today’s daily candle closes at 8 a.m. Beijing time. Closing near the high means someone is willing to buy; if it leaves a long upper wick, that usually means the top of this move.
Second, watch futures open interest. If price rises again but open interest keeps falling, that means shorts are still being squeezed, and once they’re done there’s no fuel left. Only when open interest starts rising again is new money coming in.
Third, watch the funding rate. If it stays above 0.1% or even spikes to 0.3%, that means longs are too crowded, and it becomes very easy for one sharp wick to dump the price.
Fourth, watch Upbit’s trading volume. When Korean retail enthusiasm fades, there’s no one left to absorb the spot selling.
Fifth, the November 25 unlock is an unavoidable hurdle.
If you haven’t gotten in, don’t chase it. If you’re already in, scale out gradually and don’t use leverage.
Do you think IRYS still has more upside in this move, or has it already topped? Let me know in the comments.
Not investment advice.