VET +30%: Binance OI Doubles, Funding Stays Ice-Cold
VET climbs 30% while derivatives stay quiet
VeChain's VET rose about 30% in the past 24 hours to $0.00746, with the day's range stretching from $0.00562 to $0.00750. The move matches on Binance, where the token trades at $0.00746 with a 24h change of 30.1%, and the aggregated tape across venues agrees. What stands out is not the rally itself but what the derivatives book is doing underneath it.
Binance OI doubles while MEXC trims
Open interest in VET perpetuals climbed 24.7% over 24 hours to roughly $36M. Binance led the charge, with OI up 126% to about $7.5M, and Bybit added 77% to $5.2M. But the build is not uniform: MEXC, one of the larger venues by notional, cut its OI by 19.5% to $8.3M even as the price rose. Kucoin added just 6.9%. When longs and shorts are piling in on some venues while others quietly reduce, the positioning story is messier than a simple squeeze.
Funding near zero: fresh longs, not crowded shorts
Funding rates across major exchanges sit at or below zero. Binance shows roughly 0.00%, Gate is slightly negative at -0.087%, and Bitget prints -0.012%. A short squeeze normally pushes funding sharply positive as late shorts pay to stay short. That is not happening here. The absence of positive funding, combined with no VET entries in the largest-liquidation list, points to new long positioning rather than forced covering of an existing short book.
What to watch
The VET move is still spot-led so far, with the derivative tail following rather than driving. The next tell is funding: if it flips positive while OI keeps climbing, late longs are chasing and the risk of a snapback rises. If funding stays flat while Binance OI keeps compounding, the build is more likely conviction money than leverage. Either way, the MEXC reduction is the outlier to watch, since it suggests not all large holders believe the rally extends.
Data as of 00:20 Beijing time on August 28, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit, Gate, Bitget, Hyperliquid, MEXC, Kucoin and other major exchanges.