BTC Drops to $76.5K, OI Barely Moves: Longs Refuse to Quit
BTC slid to $76,509 on Binance early Tuesday, down 3.2% over 24 hours, after the latest push above $79,000 failed. The drop carried $265.8 million in liquidations across major venues, and 82% of that was long positions. What stands out is what did not happen: open interest barely moved.
BTC breaks below $77K as longs take the hit
The move lower started from a 24-hour high of $79,229 on Binance. The coin now trades at $76,509 on Binance and $76,529 on OKX, with the session low at $76,368 on Binance so far. BTC-specific liquidations reached $92.1 million in the past day, with long positions accounting for $81.2 million, or 88%. The single largest BTC liquidation was a $2.98 million long on Binance at $76,428. Over the last hour, market-wide liquidations ran 99% long, a sign the flush is hitting late-leveraged buyers rather than shorts.
Open interest holds near $43.6B: who is cutting
Aggregate BTC open interest sits at $43.57 billion, down just 2.2% from a day earlier. That is a mild unwind for a 3.2% price drop. The picture splits by venue. Binance trimmed only 0.6%, OKX actually added 0.6%, Bybit rose 0.6%, while Gate cut 3.4% and Bitget shaved 0.2%. CME, which holds about 20.7% of total open interest at $9.03 billion, settles daily and moved with the cash market. The deleveraging is concentrated in a few venues, not broad-based.
Funding stays positive: no panic in the perpetual market
Perpetual funding across major exchanges remains positive. Binance shows 0.0053%, OKX 0.0072%, Bybit 0.0015% and Gate 0.0013%. Positive funding means longs are still paying shorts to keep positions open, which is unusual after an 88% long liquidation flush. In past episodes, a flush this size pushed funding negative within hours. That it has not suggests the leveraged crowd is treating this as a dip rather than a regime change, or the flush was simply not big enough to clear the book.
What sticky positioning means next
Two readings follow. If the market keeps falling, the built-up long book becomes fuel for a deeper flush, since open interest has not reset. If price stabilizes, the same book supports a snap-back, and positive funding with reduced OI at the margin favors shorts getting squeezed on any bounce attempt. Watch Binance and OKX OI over the next session: a sharp drop would signal forced deleveraging, while steady OI with a price recovery would point to a healthy rebuild.
Data as of Beijing time 02:46 on September 2, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit, Hyperliquid, Gate, Bitget and other major exchanges.