Zcash Breaks Out to $1,358 as Open Interest Jumps 49.7% on Short Squeeze

Zcash (Zcash) ripped 18.5% higher over the past 24 hours to $1,358.51, but the more telling number sits on the derivatives side: open interest jumped 49.7% to $2.89B as trading volume exploded 135.5% to $12.12B. A price move this size backed by an OI increase of similar magnitude usually means new capital is entering, not just existing longs marking to a higher price.

News context: CryptoPotato reported that a large trader has built substantial short positions across BTC, ETH and ZEC in anticipation of a post-CLARITY pullback, a bet that runs directly against the short-liquidation pressure visible in ZEC's derivatives data below.

OKX Leads the OI Build, Binance Still Dominates Size

Across 18 tracked venues, open interest in ZEC totals $2.89B. Binance still commands the largest slice at 26.5% ($767.7M), up 39.4% in 24 hours. Bybit follows with 10.1% share ($292.5M, +50.8%), while OKX holds a smaller 6.8% ($197.7M) but posted the fastest growth among the majors at +61.7% in 24h and +13.6% in just the last four hours - the clearest sign that fresh positioning is concentrating there. Bitget added 5.6% share ($163.1M, +36.5%). The breadth of the increase across four separate top-tier venues argues against this being a single-exchange anomaly.

Funding Stays Negative While Shorts Get Liquidated

Despite the rally, aggregate funding remains negative at -0.0396% per 8 hours, and per-exchange rates confirm the bias: Bitget sits at -0.0638%, Binance at -0.0374%, Bybit at -0.0174%, with Coinex at an extreme -0.5085%. Shorts are still paying longs to stay in the trade, meaning the market has not flipped bullish on paper even as price grinds higher.

That negative funding is colliding with a one-sided liquidation wave. Over the past 24 hours, $72.8M was liquidated, with $64.7M coming from short positions versus just $8.1M from longs - nearly an 8-to-1 skew. The 12-hour window shows the same pattern ($47.8M short liquidations vs. $6.3M long), and the single largest liquidation was a $7.08M short on Hyperliquid at $1,363.33, followed by two more Hyperliquid shorts worth $2.17M (at $1,336.44) and $2.16M (at $1,374.50). The breakout is being amplified by a short squeeze, not purely organic demand.

Account Positioning Still Short, Taker Flow Turning

The account-based long/short ratio shows only 31.3% of accounts net long overall, and the split is sharpest on Binance (28.2% long / 71.8% short), OKX (24.8%/75.2%) and Gate (23.0%/77.0%) - retail-style accounts remain heavily positioned against the move. Taker flow tells a different story: aggregate taker buying sits at 46.8% long, with Gate's taker flow flipping to 55.0% long and OKX's to 48.4% long, both meaningfully more bullish than their account splits. Active order flow is starting to lean long even while the broader account base has not yet capitulated.

Verdict

The setup favors continuation as long as ZEC holds above $1,300 and open interest stays above roughly $2.7B - both would confirm the short squeeze still has fuel and fresh longs are not exiting. The view is invalidated if funding turns positive while OI simultaneously drops below $2.5B, which would signal the squeeze has exhausted itself and newly built longs are unwinding into the $1,250-$1,300 zone rather than short covering continuing to drive price. Data as of 13:12 Beijing time on Sep 17, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit and other major venues.