FET +6.9% to $0.176: OI Up 8%, Funding Calm, No Squeeze

FET Rises 6.9% to $0.176 on Binance, With No Liquidation Pressure

FET traded at $0.176 on Binance as of 15:30 Beijing time, up 6.9% over 24 hours. The high for the day is $0.18 and the low is $0.1624, a range of roughly 10.8%. The move looks ordinary on the surface, but the positioning data underneath tells a cleaner story than most rallies this week.

CoinVictor's cross-exchange data shows the same price across venues: Bitget $0.1759, KuCoin $0.1760, Gate $0.1758 and Hyperliquid $0.1761. No single exchange is leading or lagging by more than a few tenths of a percent, which rules out a mechanical squeeze on one venue.

Open Interest Rises 8% to $82.3M, KuCoin Adds 24.6%

Total open interest across FET perpetuals sits at $82.3 million, up 8% in 24 hours. The breakdown matters more than the total. Binance still holds the biggest share at $23.3 million, up 6.8%, while KuCoin added 24.6% to $14.3 million and Hyperliquid grew 18% to $7.7 million. MEXC was the outlier, trimming 2.5%.

The direction of the OI change matches the price direction, which is the signature of new money entering the market rather than old positions being squeezed out. If this were a short squeeze, OI would typically fall as forced covers unwind leverage.

Funding at 0.01% on Binance: Leverage Is Cheap, Not Hot

Perpetual funding on Binance reads 0.01% for the current interval, close to neutral. The volume-weighted average across venues sits near 0.009%. In past FET squeezes, funding spiked hard as shorts rushed to cover. This time it has not moved, which means the rally is not being paid for by leveraged bears.

Liquidations confirm the read. FET barely appears on the 24-hour liquidation leaderboard, with total wiped positions in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, a rounding error next to the $575 million liquidated across the market in the same window. No large single order was forced out.

What This Means for the AI Token Sector

FET has been a quiet laggard in the AI token group, so this 6.9% move stands out mainly because it happened without drama. The same sector's bigger names, like TAO at $240 (+2.6%) and WLD at $0.416 (+5.1%), moved in sympathy, but none of them show the squeeze pattern either.

For traders, the takeaway is that this rally has a different risk profile from the VELVET or TUT moves seen earlier this week. With funding near zero and OI building slowly, the position is more sustainable, but it also lacks the fuel that turns small moves into vertical ones. A break above the $0.18 high on rising volume would be the first confirmation that the incremental longs are real.

Data as of 15:30 Beijing time on August 25, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit, Hyperliquid, Gate, Bitget, KuCoin, MEXC and other major exchanges.