AIN is up 252%; annualized costs for bulls are 163%
$AIN It rose from 0.0398 to 0.1532, a gain of 285% in two days. But bulls now have to pay a fee of 0.448% every day—an annualized rate of 163%.
This is the costliest rally I've seen recently.
There are reasons for the high cost, and risks that come with it. I spent all night breaking down the data, and my conclusion is: this isn't a bubble—bulls and bears are fighting head-on. The bulls are currently on top, but the bill gets heavier by the day.
1. Two days: from dead calm to a massive surge
| Time | Price | Trading volume | Phase |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10-25, full day | 0.0380 | 1.8M | Lowest in a month |
| 10-26 16:00 | 0.0405 | 1M | No activity |
| 10-26 20:00 | 0.0473 (+16.8%) | 32M | Taking off |
| 10-27 04:00 | 0.0711 (+38.7%) | 30M | Accelerating |
| 10-27 08:00 | 0.0772 | 23M | Catching its breath |
| 10-27 12:00 | 0.1391 (+80.3%) | 144M | Main rally |
| 10-27 15:00 | 0.1391 (+28.2%) | 40M | Another push |
| 10-27 18:00 | High of 0.1532 | 42M | Topping out |
| Now | 0.1432 | — | Consolidating at highs |
On October 25, its total trading volume for the entire day was just $1.8 million, the lowest of the month. A day later, it was doing $144 million in a single hour.
2. This pattern played out once a month ago
I looked back through the daily charts and found that this wasn’t the first time.
From October 3 to 5, $AIN went through a similar rally: it climbed from 0.0242 to 0.0856, up 254% in three days, with trading volume reaching 452M. Then it drifted down for a month, returning to 0.0398.
This rally: up 285% in two days, with trading volume of 318M.
Put the two figures side by side, and a question emerges: the previous rally gained 254% on 452M, while this one gained 285% on 318M. The money was down 30%, but the gain was up 10%.
It’s not that more people are buying—the order book is thinner than it was a month ago. A $50,000 market order can now move the price by 0.40%.
A thin order book makes it easier to pump the price quickly, but it also makes it easier for the price to drop just as fast. Last time, it took three weeks to fall from 0.0856 back to 0.0398, with almost no bounce along the way.
3. What does a 14.93 bp funding rate mean?
Funding is settled every 8 hours. The settlement that just took place at 20:00 was 14.93 bp; the current rate for the next period is 14.01 bp.
At 14.93 bp: 0.149% every 8 hours, or 0.448% per day with three settlements. That works out to 163.5% annualized. For every $100,000 in a long position, you pay $448 in interest per day. Shorts get the opposite—they collect that amount each day.
On the morning of October 27, I had just looked at another coin, Q. It was up 294% (more than AIN), but its funding rate was only 0.50 bp, or 5.5% annualized.
Both surged on the same day: one had a funding rate of 163%, the other 5.5%. That’s a 30-fold difference.
What does that difference tell us? Q’s rally wasn’t driven by leveraged longs; AIN’s is.
The funding rate is the “crowding fee” that leveraged longs are willing to pay. The higher it is, the more people are scrambling to get into positions.
4. But shorts are adding positions even faster than longs
This is the most counterintuitive part.
From 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. today:
| | Quantity | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Total open interest | 30,229万 → 37,278万 contracts | +23.3% |
| Long positions | 19,951万 → 22,740万 contracts | +14.0% |
| Short positions | 10,278万 → 14,538万 contracts | +41.5% |
Shorts are adding positions three times faster than longs.
The price rose from 0.0711 to 0.1432, while short positions grew by 41.5%. That means all those short positions are sitting on unrealized losses.
Now let’s look at who’s holding the positions:
| Measure | Share of shorts |
|---|---|
| Large-trader accounts | 74% |
| All market accounts | 74% |
| Large-trader positions | 39% (61% of the money is on the long side) |
Seven and a half out of every ten traders are short, but shorts account for only 39% of the money.
This is the third time today we’ve seen the same pattern (after Q and JCT): traders are short, but the money is long.
Large traders’ money is on the long side (61%), while retail traders are piling into shorts halfway up the mountain.
5. Who’s really driving this rally?
Put these three numbers together, and the picture becomes clear.
The funding rate is positive (14.93 bp), which means longs are willing to pay to chase the price; yet short positions are growing faster than longs (41.5% versus 14.0%), which means shorts are passively taking the other side; and the price keeps making new highs, climbing from 0.0398 to 0.1532.
With all three happening at once, there’s only one explanation: longs are aggressively buying with market orders, while shorts are passively selling with limit orders. The short positions keep piling up because they can’t sell them all.
This is the exact opposite of what happened with AKE, where “shorts actively added positions to push the price down.” AIN’s longs are on the attack, while shorts are defending—and their defensive line keeps retreating.
6. There’s still half the distance to go above
I pulled up 400 daily candles for this coin, from its listing to now (starting 2025-09-23).
Its all-time high was 0.2170, reached on September 15, 2026.
It’s now at 0.1432, still 51.6% below that level.
This is completely different from Q—Q hit an all-time high today, with nothing overhead; AIN is still halfway up the mountain, with a real supply of underwater holders above it.
The people who bought around 0.2170 have been underwater for a month and a half. If the price rises into the 0.18–0.20 range, they’ll start selling to break even.
7. What comes next
Scenario A: The rally continues, target 0.17–0.18 (40%)
The case for this scenario is that shorts still have 145 million contracts in unrealized losses, while the funding rate has shot up from 0.5 bp to 14.93 bp and is still climbing. Watch for two triggers: a move above 0.1532 (today’s high) and OI continuing to rise past 380 million contracts. At 0.17, longs will run into the supply of underwater holders from September.
Scenario B: 0.1532 is the top; price pulls back and moves sideways (40%)
The 14.93 bp funding rate is already the highest of this rally, and the cost to longs is accumulating quickly. Watch for a pullback to 0.1270 (the 16:00 low) → 0.1075 (the 15:00 low) → 0.0955.
Scenario C: A straight dump (20%)
A break below 0.1270 that closes below it would mean longs have pulled out. The next level to watch is 0.0882 (the 13:00 low).
8. Three signals to watch
The funding rate comes first. I worked it out: if it keeps surging past 30 bp, that means longs are getting increasingly desperate. This kind of “last gasp” is usually a top. If it holds at 13–16 bp, longs are willing to pay that cost and the rally could grind on. If it drops below 5 bp, longs have pulled out and the rally is over.
The second is OI. It’s currently at 373 million contracts. A break above 380 million means new money is still coming in; a drop below 340 million means both longs and shorts are pulling out.
The third is 0.1270. That was the low of the 16:00 candle and the midpoint consolidation area of this rally. A break below it invalidates Scenario A.
9. Honestly speaking
I wouldn’t touch this level—not on either side.
I wouldn’t go long: funding is 163% annualized, or 0.448% a day. Even if you get the direction right, holding for three days costs you 1.3% upfront. And this coin’s intraday swings start at 20%, so there’s nowhere to place a stop-loss.
I wouldn’t go short: 74% of accounts are already short. If you enter now, you’re short number 750, with the 749 ahead of you all losing money—and you’ll still be paying funding to the longs.
If you really want to wait, watch two levels. One is 0.18–0.20, the breakeven zone for September’s underwater holders and where the funding rate would be at an extreme; that’s where the risk-reward for a short starts to make sense. The other is a break below 0.1270, confirming that longs have pulled out. Then a short would be with the trend, not catching a falling knife.
The above is a data breakdown and does not constitute investment advice.