ACE +12% to $0.188: OI Up 24%, Funding Negative

ACE climbs 12% while most of the market pulls back

ACE traded at $0.188 on Binance in the early hours of Tuesday, up 12.1% over 24 hours while BTC and ETH slipped about 2% and SOL lost nearly 3%. The 24-hour range on Binance ran from $0.1585 to $0.1949, and OKX showed a similar move at $0.1899, up 12.9% from its daily open. The rally stands out not because of its size, but because it happened against a red tape across majors.

Spot volume reached about $62.4 million on Binance alone over the window. That is not a top-tier number, but for a token with a $40 million derivatives book, it is enough to move the price.

Open interest jumps 24% as venues split

Perpetual open interest across all tracked exchanges reached $40.5 million, up 23.8% in 24 hours. The build is concentrated: MEXC holds 31.4% of the book and added 24.3%, Binance holds 28.9% and added 25.1%, and KuCoin holds 15.3% with a slower 10.4% gain. Bybit, at 8.8% of the book, added the fastest at 37% over 24 hours.

The last four hours tell a different story. Binance added another 5.7%, MEXC 4.0% and KuCoin 4.3%, but Bybit cut 14.5%, Gate trimmed 12.4% and Hyperliquid slashed 26.4% of its position. Money is rotating into the bigger venues while the smaller books deleverage, which usually points to larger participants repositioning rather than retail piling in.

Negative funding with a rising price is the real signal

Funding is negative across the board. Binance sits at -0.0069%, Bybit -0.0082%, Gate -0.0075%, KuCoin -0.0065% and MEXC -0.0069%, with Hyperliquid the least negative at -0.0013%. Negative funding means longs pay shorts, and the crowd still carries a short bias even after a 12% rally.

That mismatch matters. A price that climbs while funding stays negative usually means the move is driven by spot buying, not by leveraged longs. It also leaves the book with a group of underwater shorts who either pay up to hold, or get squeezed if the price pushes higher.

What to watch next

The setup is not a typical breakout. Liquidations on the book are negligible in the global rankings, so this move is not a cascade of stopped-out orders; it is buying against a stubborn short base. The key tell going forward is funding. If it flips positive while open interest keeps rising, leveraged longs are joining late and the risk of a flush grows. If funding stays negative and OI keeps building, shorts keep paying and the squeeze fuel stays loaded.

For now, the cleaner read is divergence: spot buyers moving price, derivatives still positioned against them. Watch the 4-hour OI flows on Binance and MEXC, because those two have been adding at every pullback.

Data as of 02:10 Beijing time (Sep 2), covering Binance, OKX, Bybit, Bitget, Gate, KuCoin, MEXC, Hyperliquid and other major venues.