Solana Funding Flips Negative at -0.0166% as Shorts Eat $7.4M in Liquidations
Solana is up 2.7% to $101.14 over the past 24 hours, yet the blended 8-hour funding rate across venues has dropped to -0.0166%, a signal that would normally point to bearish crowding. The catch: open interest is expanding, not shrinking, and the bulk of the day's liquidations hit short positions, not longs. That combination — rising price, rising OI, negative blended funding, and a short-heavy liquidation tape — is the core tension in SOL's derivatives book right now.
Funding Turns Negative While Majors Stay Calm
The aggregate 8h funding rate of -0.0166% masks a split market. On the exchanges that carry the most open interest, funding is still mildly positive: Binance sits at 0.0100%, OKX at 0.0093%, Bybit at 0.0051%, Gate at 0.0038% and Bitget at 0.0014%. Hyperliquid is barely positive at 0.0013% and dYdX is flat at -0.0001%. The entire drag on the blended average comes from Coinex, where the rate has cratered to -0.5176% — an outlier by more than two orders of magnitude versus every other venue. Strip that single exchange out and SOL's funding backdrop on the exchanges that actually move price is neutral-to-mild-long, not the outright negative reading the headline average implies.
Open Interest Still Expanding Into the Rally
Total open interest across 19 tracked exchanges sits at $4.33B, up 3.2% over 24 hours. Binance leads with 19.3% of the market at $835.35M (+4.8% in 24h), followed by Gate at 15.5% share with $671.14M (+4.1%), Bybit at 13.8% with $595.09M (+2.3%), Bitget at 10.1% with $437.65M (+3.0%) and OKX at 6.2% with $267.86M (+4.9%). Every one of the top five venues added open interest in the same session price rose, which is the signature of fresh positioning rather than a squeeze fully running its course. If negative funding were about to force a wave of long unwinds, OI would typically be flat or falling into the move — instead it is climbing alongside price on all the major books.
Short Squeeze Confirms Bullish Tape
The liquidation data backs up the OI story. Of the $8.90M wiped out in the last 24 hours, $7.42M came from short positions versus just $1.48M from longs — a roughly 5-to-1 skew. The 12h window shows the same lean: $5.92M in short liquidations against $1.23M in longs. The largest single events were all shorts getting run over: a $993.1K Binance short liquidated at $101.59, an $827.6K Binance short at $101.70, and a $306.3K OKX short at $101.53 — all clustered just above the $101 spot level, which is now acting as a magnet for stopped-out sellers. The long/short account data adds a wrinkle: 69.4% of accounts are net long overall (Bitget the most crowded at 77.8% long, Bybit at 71.9%), but Binance's taker flow shows only 47.2% buy volume against 52.8% sell — meaning active order flow on the largest venue is still tilted toward selling into strength even as retail accounts sit heavily long and shorts keep getting squeezed out. That gap between crowded long positioning and short-leaning taker flow is exactly the kind of setup that can keep producing short squeezes without ever fully flipping into a long-liquidation event.
News context: Crypto Briefing reported that Solana and XRP spot ETFs pulled in fresh inflows even as Bitcoin and Ethereum funds saw a combined $520M in outflows, suggesting some rotation into SOL exposure alongside the derivatives positioning shift.
Verdict: The $101.5-$101.7 zone is now the line in the sand — it's where the largest short liquidations already fired, and a clean hold above it with OI staying above $4.3B keeps the squeeze thesis intact, especially with basis still in backwardation at -7.23% annualized, leaving room for it to normalize higher. The setup breaks down if SOL loses $99 (where prior long liquidations concentrated in the 12h window) while OI simultaneously rolls over — that combination would confirm the negative funding is finally translating into real long capitulation rather than just a Coinex-driven statistical quirk. Watch whether Binance, OKX and Bybit funding rates turn negative in unison; that, not the blended average alone, is the tell that sentiment has genuinely flipped. Data as of 04:05 Beijing time on Sep 18, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit and other major venues.