Monero Open Interest Climbs to $226M as Longs Absorb 62% of Liquidations

Monero (XMR) is trading at $511.94, up 3.1% over the past 24 hours, while aggregate open interest across 15 exchanges has climbed to $226.1M, up 2.1% on the day. The print isn't clean, though: OI actually slipped 0.9% in just the last hour even as spot pushed higher, and over the same 24-hour window longs absorbed 62% of the $55,448 in total liquidations — an unusual split for a session that closed green.

Exchange OI Build Is Top-Heavy on Binance and Bybit

The $226.1M book is concentrated on two venues. Bybit carries the largest single share at 18.2% ($41.2M), up a modest 2.5% over 24 hours and 0.5% over the last four hours. Binance holds 17.7% ($40.1M) but grew nearly three times faster over the same day, up 6.9% in 24 hours and 1.9% in the last four — the clearest sign that fresh leverage this session is landing on Binance rather than being spread evenly. Bitget's smaller 3.5% share ($7.9M) tells a cautionary story: it posted a 5.7% 24-hour gain but has already reversed 1.0% in the last four hours, suggesting that pocket of demand is losing steam. Further down the list, Gate's book actually contracted 0.03% over 24 hours despite popping 4.5% in the last four — a thin-liquidity venue swinging on noise rather than trend.

Funding and Positioning Point to a Split Crowd

Funding rates are positive almost everywhere longs would expect to pay: Paradex tops the board at 0.035%, with Whitebit (0.027%), Binance (0.027%) and MEXC (0.027%) close behind, and Bitget and Aster still comfortably positive at 0.019% and 0.022%. Hyperliquid is the lone holdout, printing -0.004% — the only major venue where shorts are currently being paid to stay positioned against the move. The blended average across tracked venues sits at just 0.012% per 8-hour interval, modest enough that funding alone isn't yet the kind of overheated signal that historically forces a flush. Positioning tells a more conflicted story: 57.4% of accounts sitewide are net long on the aggregate long/short read, but the taker buy ratio is only 28.9%, meaning aggressive, fee-paying flow has recently leaned toward selling into the rally rather than chasing it. Zooming into Binance specifically, its own account book is actually short-biased at 47.1% long versus 52.9% short (ratio 0.89), which means the long-heavy 57.4% aggregate figure is effectively being carried by traders on other exchanges, not Binance's own retail base.

Liquidation Windows: Longs Keep Taking the Bigger Hit

The liquidation ladder is consistent across every timeframe, and it doesn't favor the bulls. In the last hour, only $57 was liquidated and it was entirely short-side — a trivial squeeze as price ticked up. But widen the lens: over four hours, $13,576 was liquidated with longs taking 60.2% ($8,167) across 12 events; over twelve hours, $31,797 was liquidated with longs at 56.2% ($17,878) across 35 events; and over the full 24 hours, $55,448 was liquidated across 56 events, split $34,340 long (61.9%) versus $21,108 short (38.1%). Every window tells the same story — leveraged longs are absorbing more damage than shorts even as spot trades higher, which is the signature of a choppy, two-sided grind rather than a clean, low-friction breakout.

News context: several outlets reported that hackers behind a Revolut data breach are demanding a ransom of 6,000 XMR within a short deadline, a story that has put Monero's privacy-coin use case back in headlines this week without yet showing up as a distinct spike in the derivatives data above.

Verdict: this rally is real but leveraged and top-heavy — not yet a clean trend. The setup only holds if XMR defends the $500 handle it's currently sitting just above at $511.94; a close back under $500 paired with OI fading toward $220M would confirm the longs currently eating most of the liquidation flow are capitulating rather than reloading, flipping the bias bearish. Conversely, a break and hold above $520 with OI expanding past $230M and the long share of liquidations easing back under 50% would validate this as genuine fresh demand on Binance and Bybit rather than leveraged froth waiting to unwind. Data as of 03:05 Beijing time on Sep 18, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit and other major venues.