AAVE Hits $134 on BTC Squeeze Rally: OI +5.1%, Funding Cold

AAVE follows BTC past $134 as shorts cover

The DeFi lending token climbed 6% to $134.34 on Binance in the past 24 hours, tracking a BTC short squeeze that pushed the largest crypto past $81,000. It touched $135.45 at its high before easing back, while OKX printed $134.37 at the same moment, so the move was broad rather than exchange-specific. What makes this leg different from the August rally is the leverage behind it: total open interest rose only 5.1% to $322.5M, a modest build for a 6% price gain.

Hyperliquid still owns the largest AAVE book

Hyperliquid held $81.9M of the token's open interest, or 25.4% of the market, the largest single venue. Bybit added the fastest among major exchanges at +7.2% over 24 hours to $61.5M, while Binance, the third-largest book at $60.7M, actually trimmed 0.5% in the last four hours. MEXC swung the most, up 16.9% on the day but down 13.1% in the latest four-hour window, a sign that fast money is rotating in and out rather than stacking positions.

Funding near zero means this is not a crowded long

Perpetual funding on AAVE sat at roughly 0.01% per eight hours across Binance, OKX, Bybit and Gate, and 0.0013% on Hyperliquid. When a token rises 6% with funding this cold, longs are not paying a premium to stay in the trade, which usually points to spot buying or short covering instead of leveraged speculation. The 24-hour liquidation data supports that reading: no AAVE position made the top liquidation list, and the squeeze was concentrated in BTC and ETH shorts.

What to watch if AAVE holds $130

The key level is the $135.45 high from this session. A clean break above it with open interest expanding past $340M would suggest fresh leveraged longs are joining, while another rejection on falling OI would look like the same fade pattern the token showed in late August, when it dropped 9% after a similar spike. Funding is the tell: if the perp rate climbs toward 0.03% while price stalls, late longs are piling in and the setup gets fragile.

Data as of 06:05 Beijing time on September 4, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit, Gate, Bitget, Hyperliquid and other major exchanges.