SUSHI +32% to $0.251: OI +81%, Funding Stays Negative
SUSHI, the governance token of the Sushi decentralized exchange, jumped roughly 32% in 24 hours to $0.2512, one of the sharpest single-day moves among DeFi tokens tracked in the derivatives market. The rally started from a low of $0.1883 on Binance and $0.1884 on OKX, two independent feeds that stayed in close agreement through the whole move.
Price action: a spot-led push off a deep low
The 24-hour range was unusually wide for a mid-cap token: Binance printed a high of $0.2559 against the $0.1883 low, and OKX showed $0.2558 against $0.1884. That is a swing of roughly 36% between extremes. Trading volume picked up sharply along the way, with Binance reporting $27.9 million and OKX roughly $20.3 million in 24-hour turnover, which suggests the move was backed by real order flow rather than a thin book.
What stands out is where the bounce started. The low near $0.188 marked a fresh multi-month weak zone for the token, and buyers stepped in at that level with enough force to reverse the entire downtrend in a single session. For a project that had spent weeks bleeding value, the speed of the reversal matters more than the percentage itself.
Open interest climbs 81%: fresh leverage is back
Perpetual open interest across major venues rose 80.7% in 24 hours to $20.1 million, per aggregated exchange data. The breakdown shows the increase was broad, not concentrated in one venue: Binance added 111.5% of its own book, OKX 95.7%, and Bybit 94.1%. Gate rose 90.3% and even the smaller CoinEx book grew 61%. In the last four hours alone, Binance OI was up another 87.9%.
That pattern matters because a rally on shrinking OI usually means shorts closing drove the price. Here the opposite happened: positions are being built while price runs. That can extend a squeeze, but it also raises the cost of being wrong on either side.
SUSHI funding stays negative while price climbs
Funding rates at the time of the snapshot were still negative at Binance (-0.058%), Bitget (-0.037%), MEXC (-0.056%), KuCoin (-0.007%) and Hyperliquid (-0.009%), with only Gate and HTX sitting slightly positive. In perp mechanics, negative funding means short positions pay long positions. So even after a 32% pump, the perp book still leans short relative to spot, and shorts are paying to keep those positions open.
Liquidation data matches that picture. Over 24 hours, SUSHI liquidations totaled about $607,000, of which $415,000, or 68%, hit short positions. The numbers are small in absolute terms for a token this size, but the direction is consistent: leveraged shorts have been the side under pressure all day.
Two scenarios to watch
If shorts keep defending and funding stays negative, any further push in spot forces more of them to cover and the squeeze has fuel left. If funding flips positive and OI keeps climbing, the trade becomes a momentum chase where late longs carry the risk instead.
For traders, the cleanest signal is the funding flip itself combined with four-hour OI. A move from negative to positive funding at Binance after this kind of rally usually marks the point where the easy part of the squeeze is over. Until that happens, the short side remains the one paying the bill. None of this is investment advice; a token swinging 36% intraday can reverse just as fast in either direction.
Data as of 02:33 Beijing time on September 6, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit, Gate, Bitget, Hyperliquid and other major exchanges.