Zcash OI Reaches $2.83B as Binance and Gate Positions Diverge
Zcash is trading at $1,552.39 with $2.83B in open interest, up 1.9% over 24 hours, while spot and derivatives turnover reaches $7.06B. The structure is more important than the headline price: Binance controls 24.6% of total OI, Bybit holds 9.7%, and Gate has expanded its exposure by 30.5% in 24 hours. That combination points to rising leverage, but not a uniformly bullish positioning regime.
The surrounding news cycle has highlighted a European ETP launch and renewed discussion of privacy technology reaching other parts of the crypto market, adding a narrative backdrop to ZEC’s elevated derivatives activity.
OI is growing, but the expansion is concentrated
Total OI stands at $2.83B across 18 venues. Binance remains the anchor with $696.5M, or 24.6%, and its OI is up 1.4% over 24 hours. Bybit is smaller at $275.6M and has grown 4.8%, giving it the strongest expansion among the largest listed venues. Gate is the structural outlier: its $217.5M position represents 7.7% of the total, after a 30.5% daily increase and a 5.4% rise over four hours.
OKX contributes $172.4M, or 6.1%, with daily OI up 2.6% but four-hour OI down 0.8%. Bitget adds $163.3M, or 5.8%, while its four-hour OI is down 0.5%. The split suggests that fresh leverage is entering selected venues rather than lifting the whole market evenly. Gate’s acceleration is especially important because it can amplify local liquidations if price moves into crowded stop zones.
Funding is positive, but venue dispersion is wide
The average eight-hour funding rate is 0.01447%, a positive carry that favors longs paying shorts. The major venues cluster near the same direction: Binance is at 0.009207%, Bybit and Gate are each at 0.01%, while Bitget is also at 0.01%. That is not an extreme broad-market premium, but the cross-venue range is unusually wide. CoinEx shows 0.165056%, whereas dYdX is negative at -0.014108%. Lighter is also higher at 0.0224%, compared with 0.00125% on Backpack and Hyperliquid.
This dispersion argues against reading the headline funding average as a single market-wide signal. The high CoinEx rate may reflect a smaller, more expensive pocket of long leverage, while negative dYdX funding shows that some traders are still willing to pay to hold shorts. In combination with Gate’s fast OI growth, the market is vulnerable to venue-specific squeezes rather than a clean one-way trend.
Liquidations and positioning reveal the squeeze risk
Over 24 hours, liquidations total $14.5M: $8.3M from shorts versus $6.2M from longs. The imbalance is even clearer in the shorter windows. In the last hour, shorts account for $62.3K of liquidations against only $1.3K for longs. Over four hours, the split is $186.7K shorts and $159.9K longs, while the twelve-hour window records $4.9M longs and $2.9M shorts. The market has therefore been clearing shorts recently, even though the longer window includes a substantial long flush.
The largest recorded events were short liquidations at $1,626.90 on Binance worth $737.4K and $1,624.20 on Hyperliquid worth $452.5K. OKX also logged short liquidations at $1,604.39 and $1,560.67, while a $224.9K long liquidation appeared at $1,556.51. These levels frame the nearest liquidation map around the current $1,552.39 price.
The long/short ratio adds a useful contradiction. Across accounts, only 39.2% are long, meaning shorts dominate the aggregate account count. Yet taker flow is 57.4% long. Binance accounts are 34.4% long, while its takers are 43.7% long; OKX accounts are 33.8% long, but takers are 51.9% long; Gate accounts are 36.4% long against 55.1% long takers. Passive positioning is short-heavy, while aggressive traders are buying into the tape.
Verdict
The current structure favors a squeeze-biased, but unstable, upside view: short-heavy accounts and recent short liquidations can support a move toward the $1,560.67-$1,626.90 liquidation band while OI remains near $2.83B. The view is invalidated if ZEC loses $1,552.39 while OI expands above $2.83B, showing that new leverage is reinforcing downside rather than forcing shorts out. Data as of 08:19 Beijing time on Sep 26, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit and other major venues.