Ethena ENA Funding Turns Negative as Open Interest Climbs 4.88%

Ethena (ENA) is showing a classic derivatives tension point: price is $0.28071 after a 4.5% move, aggregate open interest is $764.6M and up 4.9% in 24 hours, yet the average 8-hour funding rate is negative. That combination suggests traders are adding exposure while shorts still hold the funding advantage, leaving the market vulnerable to another squeeze if price continues higher.

News coverage has focused on Ethena extending USDe’s backing strategy toward tokenized equities and equity-linked markets, broadening the narrative beyond crypto-native collateral.

OI is concentrated, but leverage is spreading

Binance remains the largest visible venue for ENA open interest at $161.9M, representing 21.2% of the tracked total, with its position count up 1.6% over 24 hours. Bybit follows with $139.0M, or 18.2%, and a stronger 3.2% daily increase. Gate holds $77.5M, or 10.1%, but its open interest jumped 16.9%, the sharpest expansion among the major listed venues. Bitget adds $58.1M, or 7.6%, after a 3.5% rise.

That distribution matters for the negative-funding thesis. Binance and Bybit together account for a large share of the tracked positioning, but the faster build at Gate indicates that marginal leverage is entering outside the two dominant books. Across the full dataset, the ticker shows $768.9M in open interest, up 5.5% over 24 hours, while the venue summary reports $764.6M. Despite the small measurement gap, both readings point to expanding leverage rather than a clean spot-led advance.

Funding is negative in pockets, not everywhere

Funding is not uniformly bearish across venues. Binance, Bybit, Bitget, Gate and OKX each show a positive 0.005% current rate, while Bitfinex is higher at 0.0189%, Coinbase is 0.0106% and dYdX is 0.0497%. However, several venues are negative: CoinEx is at -0.4492%, Kraken at -0.0043%, EdgeX at -0.005% and Lighter at -0.0032%. Hyperliquid is only 0.00125%, close to neutral.

This split is more informative than the average alone. The largest books are mildly positive, implying longs are paying on the most liquid venues, but the extreme negative reading at CoinEx and negative pockets elsewhere show that short positioning remains crowded in parts of the market. If price rises while those negative rates persist, shorts can be forced to reduce exposure even as new longs pay to stay open. Conversely, a broad move toward higher positive funding would remove the strongest contrarian support.

Liquidations confirm short-side stress

ENA’s liquidation structure is decisively short-heavy beyond the shortest window. In the latest hour, $68.9K of longs were liquidated and no short liquidations were recorded. Over four hours, however, short liquidations reached $1.4M against $114.4K in longs. The twelve-hour split widened to $1.7M in shorts versus $552.9K in longs, and the 24-hour total reached $2.7M, including $2.0M of shorts and $711.4K of longs.

The largest recorded event was an OKX short liquidation at $0.29306 worth $249.1K. That level is therefore both a recent squeeze marker and a nearby test for whether short-covering can extend. On the downside, Binance long liquidations appeared at $0.27122 for $156.6K and $0.26411 for $94.8K, defining the levels where a reversal could begin to damage the current structure.

Positioning data adds one final warning. Accounts are net long on Binance at 64.4%, Bybit at 65.7%, Bitget at 65.1% and Gate at 56.2%. Active takers are more divided: Binance takers are 71.6% long, but OKX takers are 53.5% short, while Gate takers are 79.5% long. The gap between account positioning and active flow means the market is not uniformly one-way; aggressive traders are still willing to sell into strength on at least one major venue.

Verdict: ENA remains squeeze-prone while price holds above $0.27122 and aggregate open interest stays near or above $764.6M. A break above $0.29306 with open interest still expanding would favor continued short covering; the view is invalidated if price loses $0.27122 while open interest rises, signaling fresh leverage is being trapped on the long side rather than shorts being forced out. Data as of 05:05 Beijing time on Sep 28, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit and other major venues.