Zcash Open Interest Falls 5.8% as $2.8B Structure Turns Fragile
Zcash is showing a clear deleveraging pattern: price is down 7.7% to $1,453.84, while total open interest has fallen 5.8% in 24 hours to $2.8B. The decline is paired with $28.6M in 24-hour liquidations, of which $26.4M came from longs. That combination points to a long-side unwind rather than a clean, two-way reset, leaving price structure more important than headline momentum.
The broader crypto backdrop is also being shaped by weaker risk sentiment and renewed attention on institutional flows, but ZEC’s derivatives data is more specific: leverage is shrinking while traders remain unevenly positioned across venues.
OI concentration shows uneven pressure
Binance remains the largest visible OI venue with $648.4M, equal to 23.1% of the tracked total, after a 6.2% 24-hour decline. Gate is second among the listed exchanges at $339.7M and 12.1% share, but it is an outlier in direction: its OI increased 5.8%. Bybit holds $235.3M, or 8.4%, yet suffered the sharpest major-venue contraction at 12.4%. OKX contributes $162.2M and 5.8% of OI after a 7.5% drop, while Bitget has $159.8M, or 5.7%, after falling 7.5%.
This split matters. Binance, Bybit, OKX and Bitget are all losing leverage, but Gate is adding it. The four contracting venues represent a meaningful portion of the market’s core liquidity, so the aggregate OI decline is not simply a low-quality exchange artifact. At the same time, Gate’s expansion could preserve pockets of crowded exposure and make the next directional move more abrupt.
Funding is positive, but not uniformly bullish
Current funding rates reinforce the idea that leverage has not fully washed out. Binance is charging longs 0.01%, Bybit is at 0.01%, and Gate is also 0.01%. Bitget is notably higher at 0.06%, while CoinEx is the extreme outlier at 0.17%. In contrast, Bitfinex is negative at -0.08%, meaning shorts are paying longs there.
The dispersion is more useful than the average. Positive funding on the largest venues says long demand still exists despite the price decline, while Bitget and CoinEx show that some traders are paying a meaningful premium to maintain bullish exposure. Bitfinex’s negative reading suggests positioning is not synchronized, reducing the strength of any single-market funding signal. Unless OI stabilizes alongside price, positive funding can become an additional cost for longs caught in a continuing unwind.
Liquidations identify the immediate danger zone
The liquidation profile is decisively long-heavy. In the last hour, long liquidations reached $917.8K versus $15.9K for shorts. Over four hours, the split widened to $1.5M against $149.4K. The 12-hour window recorded $21.9M in long liquidations and $714.6K in shorts, while the 24-hour figures reached $26.4M and $2.2M respectively.
The largest recorded event was a $886.4K long liquidation on Hyperliquid at $1,491.92, followed by a $373.9K Binance long liquidation at $1,467.45. Those prints place a practical stress band above the current price and show that longs have already been forced out across several levels. Yet the liquidation count also rose to 4,426 over 24 hours, indicating broad rather than isolated deleveraging.
Positioning data adds a useful contradiction. Overall accounts are 45.1% long, while active takers are 54.0% long. Binance accounts are only 39.4% long and its takers are 33.9% long, confirming defensive positioning. Bybit is different: accounts are 53.7% long, and OKX takers are 54.9% long even though OKX accounts are 42.9% long. Passive accounts therefore lean short overall, while some active flow is still buying, a divergence that can produce sharp squeezes if price recovers.
Verdict: The immediate structure remains bearish-to-fragile while ZEC trades around $1,453.84 with OI near $2.8B. A move below the $1,467.45 liquidation reference, followed by further OI contraction, would favor another long flush; reclaiming $1,491.92 while OI expands would invalidate that downside continuation view and signal that active buyers are absorbing the unwind. Data as of 09:05 Beijing time on Sep 29, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit and other major venues.