AVAX OI Drops 8.8% as $1.4M Liquidations Expose Long Bias
Avalanche derivatives are showing a clear positioning split: AVAX trades at $10.41, while aggregate open interest has dropped 8.8% in 24 hours to $431.8M. At the same time, $1.4M in contracts were liquidated, with longs accounting for $1.2M. Recent market commentary has paired an upside case with warnings that a shakeout could arrive before any sustained recovery.
OI is falling unevenly across venues
Binance remains the largest reported venue at $113.4M, or 26.3% of tracked OI, after an 8.4% daily decline. Bybit holds 17.3% with $74.6M, down 8.7%, while Gate accounts for 15.4% at $66.5M and is the only major top venue showing daily growth, up 3.8%. That divergence matters: Gate added exposure even as the broader market contracted, although its latest four-hour change was almost flat at -0.1%.
The contraction was sharper at smaller but still relevant venues. Bitget represents 6.7% of OI and fell 13.8% over 24 hours, while OKX holds 4.6% and declined 10.0%. Across the tracked exchange set, OI fell 8.8%, suggesting that the headline price weakness is being accompanied by deleveraging rather than a uniform build-up of fresh short exposure.
Funding confirms a fragmented bias
The funding rate picture is not uniformly bearish or bullish. Current rates range from -0.1% on CoinEx to 0.0% on Binance, Bybit, OKX and several other venues after one-decimal rounding. BitMEX and Kraken are also negative at -0.0%, while Gate is near 0.0%. The spread implies that traders are paying very different costs to hold exposure depending on venue, rather than expressing one synchronized view.
That matters alongside the account data. The aggregate account split is 71.4% long, but the active taker readings on Binance and Gate are short-heavy: Binance takers are 66.6% short and Gate takers are 63.9% short. Passive or existing accounts therefore remain positioned for upside while aggressive recent execution leans the other way. This is the core divergence: crowded long accounts are losing OI, while market orders are pressing shorts.
Long liquidations are doing the immediate damage
The liquidation structure reinforces the pressure on longs. In the latest hour, $427.9K of long positions were liquidated and no short liquidations were recorded. Over four hours, long liquidations reached $717.3K versus only $1.3K for shorts. The twelve-hour comparison was $1.1M in long liquidations against $49.6K in shorts, and the full-day split was $1.2M versus $146.5K.
The largest recorded long liquidations clustered at $10.29, $10.16 and $10.15, each on Binance, with individual values of $56.1K, $55.6K and $51.1K. Those levels are practical stress markers because they show where leverage has already been forced out, not merely where traders expect support.
Verdict: The near-term signal remains positioning-negative while AVAX stays below $10.29 and OI remains under $431.8M: long accounts are crowded, active flow is short-biased, and liquidations are overwhelmingly long. A sustained reclaim of $10.29 accompanied by OI expansion above $431.8M would invalidate this bearish divergence view; a break through $10.16 and $10.15 would instead confirm that the liquidation pocket is still active. Data as of 16:05 Beijing time on Sep 28, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit and other major venues.