Monero Jumps 4.9% to $512 as Long Liquidations Outpace Shorts 3-to-2

Monero has jumped 4.9% to $512.68, dragging open interest across derivatives venues up 4.48% to $227.9 million even as long positions, not shorts, have absorbed the bulk of forced liquidations in every window from the past hour to the past day. That mismatch between a rising spot price and long-heavy liquidation flow is the clearest sign yet of a positioning split building underneath Monero's rally.

Bybit and Binance Tighten Their Grip on Open Interest

Of the roughly $227.9 million in total open interest tracked across 15 venues, Bybit now holds the largest single share at 18.3% ($41.6 million), just ahead of Binance's 17.4% ($39.7 million). Both books grew through the rally: Bybit's OI rose 4.3% over 24 hours and another 3.4% in the last four hours alone, while Binance's OI climbed a sharper 5.8% over the day, though it cooled to a 2.4% four-hour gain. Bitget trails at 3.5% ($7.9 million), up 4.1% over 24 hours but down 0.6% in the most recent four-hour window, an early sign that the smaller book is losing conviction faster than the two majors. Further down the list, Gate's $800,710 in OI shrank 4.3% over the day, and Coinex's already-tiny $152,825 position collapsed 88.9%, underscoring how thin the tail of this market has become outside the top three exchanges.

Funding Rates Split Wide Between Venues

The funding rate picture is just as uneven. Paradex prices the richest long premium in the market at 0.063% per period, with Bybit (0.044%) and Coinex (0.043%) close behind, while Lighter (0.035%), Whitebit (0.028%), MEXC (0.028%) and Binance (0.028%) sit in the middle of the pack. At the other extreme, Bitunix shows a flat 0% rate and Edgex prints just 0.005%, with Hyperliquid (0.006%) barely above it. The blended average sits at roughly 0.022% per 8-hour period, squarely between the two clusters. That split tells a fragmented story: the venues carrying the heaviest and fastest-growing OI are the ones charging longs the richest premium, while several mid-tier books are barely charging a premium at all despite the same spot rally.

Accounts Lean Long, but Takers and Liquidations Don't Agree

Account-level positioning shows 57.4% of traders net long overall, yet on Binance specifically the account split flips to 53.0% short versus 47.0% long, a long/short ratio of just 0.89. Actively executed taker flow is even more skewed away from the bullish account read, with only 28.9% of taker volume sitting on the buy side. That gap between what accounts are holding and what taker flow and Binance's own book show is echoed directly in the liquidation data: in the past hour, 100% of the $3,923 wiped out was long positions; over four hours longs still made up 61.8% of the $20,665 in liquidations; over 12 hours, 58.9% of $33,702; and over the full 24 hours, longs accounted for 59.6% of the $57,845 total versus 40.4% for shorts. Every single window skews toward long liquidations even though price finished the day up nearly 5%, consistent with leveraged longs getting shaken out on intraday pullbacks inside an otherwise upward move rather than shorts being squeezed on the way up.

News context: Cointelegraph reported that hackers behind a fintech data breach demanded roughly 6,000 XMR, worth about $3 million, threatening to leak tens of thousands of customer records within a 24-hour deadline.

Verdict: The gap between 57.4% long-leaning accounts and only 28.9% long-leaning taker flow, paired with long liquidations dominating all four measured windows, points to a market where leverage is being punished faster than sentiment is turning bearish. As long as OI holds above $220 million and price keeps $500 as a floor, this reads as a normal shake-out inside an uptrend rather than a reversal. The view breaks if OI slips back under $220 million while price closes below $495, that combination would mean longs are de-risking outright rather than just getting stopped out on dips, and short liquidations would need to start dominating the 4h and 12h windows to confirm bulls are back in control. Data as of 02:05 Beijing time on Sep 18, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit and other major venues.