SOL Back to $106: OI $4.9B, Shorts Paid 71% of $17M Wipe

SOL is trading back above $106, up 2.3% in 24 hours, after sellers briefly pushed it under $103. The bounce looks orderly: total open interest held near $4.9B through the dip, and the liquidation tallies show shorts carried most of the damage. BTC, by contrast, is basically flat near $79,900, so this is an alt-driven move rather than a beta rally.

SOL recovers from a $102.8 low as BTC idles

The low printed around $102.8 on both Binance and OKX, with the 24-hour high near $107.3, a range of roughly 4.4%. Binance shows $106.02 and OKX $106.03 at the time of writing, so the recovery is real but not parabolic. SOL has added about 6% since it first reclaimed the $100 round number on September 4 and has now spent two straight sessions above that level.

OI holds at $4.9B while MEXC pulls 12%

Open interest across venues sits at $4.90B, up 1.8% over the day. Gate remains the largest pool at $896.7M, with Binance close behind at $866.7M after adding 4.2%. Bybit holds $666M, up 4.1%, and Hyperliquid carries $623M, up 5.1% in 24 hours and still growing over the last four hours. MEXC is the outlier: its $363M book is down 12.3%, the steepest cut among the majors, and KuCoin is off 4.4% as well. That pattern reads as rotation between venues, not leverage leaving the market.

Funding splits, and OKX shorts still pay

Funding is telling a mixed story. Binance funding is effectively zero, Bybit, Gate and Bitget run mildly positive at 0.003% to 0.009%, and Hyperliquid sits near 0.001%. OKX is the exception at -0.003%, which means shorts on that venue are still paying to hold their positions into a rising price. That leftover short conviction is part of why this rally has not turned into a leverage blow-off.

Shorts paid 71% of the $17.1M liquidation bill

SOL saw $17.1M in liquidations over the past 24 hours, and shorts supplied $12.2M of that, about 71% of the total. The single biggest hit was a Binance short of 9,469 SOL worth roughly $987K, taken out near $104.21 as price climbed off the low. A separate Binance long of 8,039 SOL, about $841K, was stopped at $104.62 in the same window.

The read: a short-covering bounce layered on top of genuine OI growth at Binance and Hyperliquid, while MEXC trimmed the most. For traders, the level to watch is funding on OKX. A flip to positive there would mean the last meaningful short pocket has folded; until then, the perp market still prices in pullback risk even as spot holds $106.

Data as of 05:20 Beijing time on September 7, 2026, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit, Gate, Bitget, Hyperliquid and other major exchanges.