Zcash Derivatives: $2.8B OI Meets a 39.3% Long-Account Share

Zcash is trading at $1,536.25 with $2.8B in open interest, but its derivatives positioning is pulling in opposite directions: only 39.3% of accounts are long, the average 8-hour funding rate is 0.0091%, and total OI slipped 0.7% over 24 hours. The result is a market where short-heavy account positioning coexists with pockets of fresh leverage.

Market discussion is also turning toward privacy technology as researchers and developers explore bringing Zcash-style shielding to Bitcoin-related systems.

OI is rising only at selected venues

Binance holds the largest disclosed share at 24.7%, or $692.5M, and its OI rose 1.9% over 24 hours even after falling 7.1% over the last 4 hours. Bybit carries 9.8% and added 1.6% over 24 hours, while its shorter-term OI declined 6.2%. These two venues therefore show a split rhythm: net accumulation across the day, but rapid deleveraging in the latest window.

Gate is the clearest countertrend. Its $207.6M OI represents 7.4% of the tracked total, up 32.9% over 24 hours and 2.3% over 4 hours. By contrast, OKX, with 6.1% and $171.8M, fell 1.8% over 24 hours and 9.3% over 4 hours. Bitget also declined 2.2% over 24 hours. This is not a uniform risk-on build; it is leverage relocating between venues.

Funding is positive, but not evenly crowded

Funding reinforces the divergence. Bybit is charging 0.0099%, Gate 0.0078%, and Bitget 0.0067%, while Binance is at 0.0021%. The broad positive reading suggests longs are paying to remain open, yet the cost is materially higher on venues where OI behavior is less defensive. BitMEX shows 0.0100%, while dYdX is negative at -0.0071% and Kraken is negative at -0.0009%, proving that the market does not share one unified directional price for leverage.

That matters because the ticker's average funding rate is 0.0114% as a decimal-derived 8-hour measure, while the venue snapshot shows sharply different current rates. Positioning can therefore look bullish through funding without representing a synchronized long buildup across the market.

Accounts are short, while active flow is only less short

The account split is decisively defensive on the largest venues. Binance accounts are 35.0% long versus 65.0% short; OKX is 33.3% versus 66.7%; and Gate is 36.7% versus 63.3%. Bybit is the exception, with 50.7% long and 49.3% short. Across the ticker, the account long share is 39.3%, while the active-trader measure is 35.3%, so taker positioning is even more short-biased than the account mix.

Liquidations show why this divergence can remain unstable. In the last hour, longs lost $2.0M against $106.9K for shorts; over 4 hours, long liquidations reached $3.8M versus $237.0K. The 12-hour window finally flipped, with $7.5M in short liquidations against $5.4M in longs, and the 24-hour total reached $15.9M, including $8.8M of shorts and $7.1M of longs. The largest recorded short liquidation occurred at $1,626.90 for $737.4K, while a major long liquidation hit $1,526.39 for $347.4K.

Verdict: The near-term setup is a positioning squeeze risk around $1,536.25, not a clean trend confirmation. The key upside reference is $1,626.90, where short liquidations have already appeared; the key downside reference is $1,526.39, with aggregate OI at $2.8B. The bearish-divergence view is invalidated if ZEC reclaims $1,626.90 while OI expands from $2.8B rather than continuing to contract. Data as of 02:05 Beijing time on Sep 26, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit and other major venues.