BTC Funding Stays Positive on 23 of 24 Venues While 64% of Accounts Sit Long

Bitcoin just printed a September low near $75,555, and the leveraged crowd has responded by not budging. Across 24 tracked perpetual venues, funding is positive on 23 of them, averaging +0.0025% per 8 hours. On Binance longs are paying 0.0049%, on Bybit 0.0068%, and on HTX 0.0097% — roughly the ceiling of normal carry — all to hold positions that are currently losing money.

News context: Cointelegraph noted the drop to the $75.6K region coincided with global bond yields at multidecade highs, a macro backdrop that has not shaken crypto's long bias.

Accounts are long, takers are not

The account-level data shows how one-sided retail positioning remains: 64.5% of Binance accounts holding BTC perp positions are long, with OKX at 64.3%, Bitget at 65.5% and Bybit at 61.3%. But the taker flow — who is actually hitting the bid or lifting the offer — tells a different story. On Binance only 45.6% of taker volume is buying, meaning aggressive flow is net selling into the crowd's long lean. OKX takers lean 53.3% to the buy side and Gate sits near balance at 51.2%. When accounts lean two-to-one long but the aggressive tape is selling, price usually resolves in the direction of the taker flow.

The lone dissenter and what carry costs

Only CoinEx shows negative funding, at -0.046% per 8 hours — an outlier that suggests its local book is already net short. Everywhere else, the long crowd is financing its own exposure through the drawdown. That carry is cheap in absolute terms, but it compounds: at Binance's current rate a leveraged long pays roughly 0.015% a day to hold through a market making lower lows, with the 24-hour tape already having liquidated $125.3 million of longs against just $39.6 million of shorts.

Our take: the pain trade is still lower first

Positioning like this rarely marks a bottom by itself. A durable low usually arrives when funding flips negative on the majors or account long ratios compress toward the mid-50s — neither has happened. Watch Binance funding as the tell: a print at or below zero would signal genuine washout and set up a cleaner long entry; continued positive funding with the taker tape still selling argues for one more flush toward the $74,100–$74,900 zone where the last round of forced long exits printed. Until one of those triggers fires, chasing either direction is paying for someone else's exit.

Data as of 18:40 Beijing time on Sept 16, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit, Bitget, Gate, HTX, Hyperliquid, CoinEx and other major exchanges.