Aptos APT OI Hits $117.3M While Long Accounts Reach 64.1%
Aptos is trading at $0.7812 while total open interest stands at $117.3M, up 6.2% over 24 hours. The headline signal is not simply bullish or bearish: 64.1% of accounts are long, yet only 46.1% of active taker flow is long. That gap, combined with $187.4K in long liquidations against $18.2K in short liquidations over 24 hours, shows a market where passive positioning is optimistic but aggressive execution is more defensive.
Market coverage has also highlighted new regional access for Tether-based Aptos trading, but the derivatives tape is currently giving more useful information than narrative momentum.
Open interest is expanding unevenly
The exchange split reinforces the positioning divergence. Binance carries 23.4% of APT open interest at $27.4M, with its position base rising only 0.3% over 24 hours. Bybit holds 20.8%, or $24.3M, and is essentially flat, down 0.0%. Together, these two large venues account for a substantial share of the market but are not driving the aggregate increase.
Instead, OKX open interest has risen 14.2% to $6.0M, while Gate has surged 215.1% to $6.1M despite representing only 5.2% of the total. Bitget, with a 7.0% share and $8.2M in open interest, has declined 2.4%. This distribution matters: total leverage is growing, but part of the expansion is concentrated in smaller books rather than confirmed by the largest venues. The one-hour increase of 1.0% suggests the buildup is still active, even as the venue leadership remains divided.
Funding is positive, but not uniformly healthy
The funding rate structure adds another layer. CoinEx shows an unusually high positive rate of 0.2%, while Binance, Bybit, OKX, Gate and Bitget are also positive at roughly 0.0% when rounded to one decimal place. By contrast, Coinbase and Bitfinex are negative at -0.0%. The broad positive bias implies that long holders are generally paying to maintain exposure, but the cross-venue spread says this is not a synchronized conviction trade.
The futures basis is -0.1%, with an annualized reading of -23.4%. That negative carry conflicts with positive funding on many venues: longs are paying in the funding market while the broader futures curve remains discounted. In practical terms, the market is charging for long exposure without offering a strong premium over spot. That is a classic setup for positioning stress if price fails to advance.
Liquidations favor a long-side stress test
The liquidation windows are consistently asymmetric. In the latest hour, $226.82 of long positions were liquidated and no short liquidations were recorded. Across four hours, long liquidations reached $15.8K with shorts again at zero. Over 12 hours, the imbalance remained clear: $58.8K in long liquidations versus $4.2K in shorts.
The 24-hour total of $205.7K, including $187.4K from longs and $18.2K from shorts, confirms that downside moves are currently removing optimistic leverage rather than forcing short sellers out. This does not prove an immediate trend reversal, because the 46.1% taker-long share shows active traders are not chasing the long side. It does, however, make the 64.1% account-long reading a vulnerability rather than a clean bullish confirmation.
Verdict: APT has a fragile long bias around $0.7812, with $117.3M of open interest acting as the key leverage reference. The positioning-divergence view stays valid while long accounts remain dominant, funding stays broadly positive, and long liquidations continue to outweigh shorts. It would be invalidated by a sustained move above $0.7812 accompanied by open interest retreating below $117.3M, signaling that the crowded-long structure is unwinding without fresh leverage. Data as of 17:10 Beijing time on Oct 1, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit and other major venues.