SOL Breaks $100: +5.5%, Shorts Paid 61%, Bybit OI +17.5%

SOL cleared $100 as buyers took control

SOL crossed the $100 mark early Tuesday, last trading at $100.14 on Binance and OKX, both exchanges reporting the same 24-hour gain of roughly 5.5%. The move extends a recovery from a $93.2 low hit a day earlier, so the token has climbed about 9.7% off that bottom. The breakout is broad-based: Binance, OKX and Bybit all quote the price within a penny of each other, which means this is a market-wide push rather than a single venue squeeze. SOL is also outperforming Bitcoin, which is up 1.7% over the same window, a sign that capital is rotating into large-cap alts rather than just chasing the BTC move.

The short squeeze behind the break

Over the past 24 hours SOL saw $22.8 million in liquidations, and 61% of that total, about $13.98 million, hit short positions. That mix matters. When a rally is driven by leverage unwinding, longs usually dominate the liquidation table. Here the opposite is true: shorts are the ones being cleared out, which points to forced covering feeding the move higher rather than retail piling into longs at the top. The squeeze is still active in the short windows too, with the 4-hour frame showing shorts paying more than three-quarters of the total. A sustained short-covering bid is exactly the kind of flow that can push a round number break like $100 further than fundamentals alone would justify.

Open interest rebuilt 4.8% to $4.61 billion

SOL open interest rose to $4.61 billion, up 4.8% in 24 hours, and the pace accelerated in the last four hours. Bybit led the rebuild with a 17.5% increase, followed by OKX at 11.2% and Binance at 8.8%. New position building on top of a squeeze means the rally has fresh fuel, but it also means the leverage base is growing again after last week's flush, which historically raises the risk of a sharp unwind if momentum stalls. The OI picture is a two-sided story: it confirms conviction, but it also re-sets the stage for the next round of forced liquidations in whichever direction breaks first.

Funding stayed neutral while the price ran

Funding rates on Binance, OKX and Bybit sit at 0.0001, effectively flat, and Gate is slightly negative. Only Lighter, a small venue, shows an extreme reading near 0.47%. Neutral funding during a 5.5% daily gain is notable: it suggests the move is being driven by spot and delta-neutral flows more than by crowded perpetual longs. That is the main difference from the mid-August squeeze, when funding spiked well above 0.01% before the reversal. For now the breakout looks healthier than a typical leverage-driven spike, though the fast OI rebuild is the factor to watch. If funding starts to climb toward 0.01% while the price stalls, the setup flips back to a crowded long trade.

Data as of 08:16 Beijing time, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit, Hyperliquid, Gate and Bitget among major exchanges.