Canton (CC) OI Jumps 6.2% to $31.5M as Shorts Eat 96% of Liquidations
Canton (CC) is up 10.2% over the past 24 hours to $0.1072, but the more telling number sits underneath the price: open interest has jumped 6.2% to $31.5M even as short sellers absorbed 96.5% of the day's liquidations. Rising OI paired with one-sided short pain is the signature of a live squeeze, not just spot-driven buying.
Open interest growth is concentrated on Bybit, not Binance
Binance still holds the largest book at $10.69M, a 33.9% share of the market's $31.5M total, but its 24h growth of just 2.6% (4h: +4.3%) looks tame next to Bybit's $7.87M position, 24.9% of the total, which expanded 15.2% in 24 hours and 10.0% in just the last four. OKX's $2.25M book (7.1% share) grew a comparable 5.1% and 6.6%, while Bitget's smaller $861K position jumped 13.6% and 7.9% over the same windows. Aster and Crypto.com posted the fastest percentage growth (+26.6% and +61.2% over 24h) but from bases under $60K, so they read as noise rather than signal. The pattern points to Bybit, not the largest venue by size, as where fresh leverage is actually being added fastest.
Funding stays flat almost everywhere, with two outliers
Nine of the fourteen tracked venues, including Binance, Bybit, Bitget, Gate, Bitunix, Kucoin, Mexc, Whitebit and Aster, are all pinned at an identical 0.005% funding rate per 8h, close to the market-wide average of roughly 0.0046%. That uniformity suggests longs aren't being taxed disproportionately for chasing the move. The exceptions are Paradex (0.0095%) and Lighter (0.0096%), both running funding roughly double the norm and hinting at extra long crowding on newer perp venues, while Crypto.com is the lone negative print at -0.0024%, where shorts are actually paying longs, a small divergence worth watching if it widens.
Liquidations are almost entirely short-side, and very fresh
Over the trailing 24 hours, $92.5K of the $95.8K in total liquidations came from short positions, 96.5% of the flow, against just $3.3K in long liquidations. The timing stands out more than the split: $90.3K of that short-side total, and 28 of the 41 total liquidation events, occurred inside the most recent 4-hour window alone. This isn't stale damage from a day ago; the bulk of the short capitulation happened very recently, consistent with a squeeze that's still active rather than one that has already cooled.
Account positioning confirms the long lean, but momentum looks stretched
On Binance, 62.9% of accounts are net long against 37.1% short, a 1.70x long-to-short ratio that lines up neatly with the short-liquidation cascade. That's a crowd that has been rewarded for staying long. The caution flag is momentum: 1h RSI at 79.6 is firmly overbought even though the 4h reading (70.1) and daily reading (53.4) are far less stretched, meaning the move has accelerated faster than the broader trend structure has caught up.
News context: broader social-media chatter tracked by Moomoo stayed fixated on Bitcoin and Ethereum liquidity levels during the period, with no direct connection to Canton's derivatives activity.
Verdict: the squeeze thesis holds as long as CC/USDT stays above roughly $0.100 and total open interest holds above roughly $29.7M, the approximate pre-rally levels for both. A close back under $0.100 paired with open interest fading toward that $29.7M floor would signal the short squeeze has run its course and long positioning is unwinding rather than extending. Data as of 12:19 Beijing time on Sep 18, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit and other major venues.