XMR Jumps 8.9% to $556: Shorts Paid 86%, Bybit OI +23%
XMR Outpaces the Squeeze Rally
XMR climbed 8.9% to $556.2 on Binance on Sep 4, recovering from a 24-hour low near $500 as the broader crypto short squeeze lifted BTC back above $80K. The bounce is steep but not a vertical spike: intraday high hit $569.9, and the token held most of those gains into the evening session. Monero is up roughly 9% in a day when most majors gained 4-7%, which puts it at the upper end of the rebound pack.
Shorts Carried 86% of the Pain
Liquidation data for the past 24 hours shows $899.4K in XMR positions wiped, and $770.9K of that was on the short side. The squeeze narrative holds up here: sellers who pressed into the $500 breakdown got caught when price turned, and the flush fed the rally. Position counts tell the same story, with 222 liquidation events and shorts taking the bulk of the damage.
OI Rebuilds Unevenly Across Venues
Total open interest sits at $322.6M, up 3.5% in 24 hours, but the recovery is far from uniform. Bybit led the charge with OI jumping 22.7% to $50.2M, while Gate added 33% from a small base. Binance grew a steady 7% to $53.6M. Hyperliquid kept the top share at 32.7% with $105.6M, though its growth was muted at 1.5%. The odd one out is KuCoin, still the second-largest venue at $68.8M but down 11.5%, meaning some traders rotated out of KuCoin positions into Bybit during the move. This is a reallocation, not a one-way deleveraging.
Funding Stayed Cool, So the Move Has Legs
Funding rates across venues remain mild after the rally. Binance charges 0.019% per 8-hour cycle, Hyperliquid sits near zero at 0.009%, and only Bybit has drifted higher at 0.11%. When a 9% bounce happens with shorts paying the bill and longs not yet paying a heavy carry, the position book is healthier than a typical blow-off top. The main risk is the same one that hit every squeezed coin today: if BTC stalls near $81K, fast money could take profit on XMR and unwind the fresh Bybit longs just as quickly as they were opened.
Data as of 18:10 Beijing time on Sep 4, 2026, covering Binance, Bybit, Hyperliquid, KuCoin, Gate, Bitget and other major venues.