RUNE Derivatives: $25.5M OI Meets an 86.9% Taker Long Bias

THORChain’s RUNE derivatives market is showing a clear positioning divergence: total open interest stands at $25.5M after rising 12.1% over 24 hours, yet the largest venues are shedding exposure over the shorter four-hour window. At the same time, 57.7% of tracked accounts are long while active takers are 86.9% long, suggesting aggressive buyers are leaning harder than the broader account base.

OI growth is concentrated, not uniform

Binance remains the largest RUNE OI venue with $7.6M, or 29.7% of the total, after adding 6.5% over 24 hours. Bybit holds $4.6M, representing 18.1%, and increased 4.6% over the same period. Bitget contributes $1.8M, or 6.9%, but moved in the opposite direction with a 5.7% daily decline. Together, the top three venues hold 54.6% of reported OI, making their different trajectories more important than the headline aggregate increase.

The shorter-term picture is more defensive. Binance OI fell 6.5% over four hours, Bybit dropped 2.2%, and Bitget declined 6.9%. Gate also lost 8.4% over 24 hours, despite a 0.7% four-hour increase. This combination points to daily leverage being rebuilt while some traders are already reducing risk into the latest move. RUNE is priced at $0.7476, down 1.5%, so the rise in daily OI has not yet translated into immediate upside confirmation.

Funding and flow signals disagree

The funding rate is positive at 0.01% on Binance, Bybit, Bitget and Gate, indicating that longs are paying shorts on several of the most relevant venues. Coinbase is milder at 0.0032%, while Hyperliquid is at 0.001383%. The cross-venue picture is not universally bullish, however: Crypto.com is at -0.005769% and Kraken at -0.008412%, with dYdX at 0%.

That split matters because a uniform long crowd would normally produce consistently positive funding. Instead, the most expensive long positioning is concentrated on several large venues, while negative rates elsewhere show that demand is not synchronized. The account-versus-taker gap reinforces this reading. The account gauge is 57.7% long, but the taker gauge is 86.9% long. Binance’s account breakdown is even more long-heavy at 65.8%, with 34.2% short. The data therefore describes a market where active orders are chasing the long side more aggressively than the overall participant base.

Liquidations show longs absorbing the downside

RUNE liquidations totaled $409.8K over 24 hours, split between $235.3K in long liquidations and $174.5K in short liquidations. The imbalance is clearer in the shorter windows: over 12 hours, longs lost $166.4K versus $51.9K for shorts; over four hours, the comparison was $16.8K versus $5.3K. Even the latest one-hour window remained long-led, with $3.3K in long liquidations against $1.2K in shorts.

The largest recorded event was a $34.2K Binance long liquidation at $0.7721. That level is important because it marks a recent area where leveraged buyers were forced out, while the broader liquidation structure shows that downside pressure has been targeting longs rather than producing a sustained short squeeze.

Verdict: The positioning signal is cautiously bearish below $0.7721: daily OI growth and an 86.9% taker-long reading show demand, but four-hour OI contraction on Binance and Bybit, negative funding on Kraken and Crypto.com, and long-dominated liquidations indicate fragile upside positioning. The key reference is $0.7476 with total OI at $25.5M; the view would be invalidated if RUNE reclaims $0.7721 while Binance OI expands from $7.6M instead of contracting. Data as of 00:05 Beijing time on Sep 28, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit and other major venues.