Bitcoin Funding Rate Turns Highly Positive, Long Squeeze In The Making?

Keshav Verma

1 year ago

3 mins read

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Data shows the Bitcoin funding rate has increased to a relatively high positive value recently, something that could lead to a long squeeze in the market.

Bitcoin Funding Rate Becomes Positive As Open Interest Rises Up

As pointed out by an analyst in a CryptoQuant post, the BTC funding rate has a positive value at the moment.

The “open interest” is an indicator that measures the total amount of positions currently open in the Bitcoin futures market.

When the value of this metric is high, it means there is a large amount of leverage involved in the market right now. Excess leverage usually leads to the crypto’s price turning more volatile.

On the other hand, low values of the open interest can result in lesser volatility in the BTC market as there isn’t much leverage involved in the futures market.

Now, here is a chart that shows the trend in the open interest over the past week:

Looks like the metric's value has increased recently | Source: CryptoQuant

As you can see in the above graph, the Bitcoin open interest has observed a rise in recent days. This could mean that the crypto may face higher volatility in the coming days.

Another indicator, the “funding rate,” measures the periodic fee that traders on derivatives exchanges pay each other to hold onto their positions. This metric tells us how the open interest is divided between the long and short traders at the moment.

The below chart shows how this indicator’s value has changed during the past seven days.

The value of the indicator seems to have been green recently | Source: CryptoQuant

From the graph, it’s apparent that the Bitcoin funding rate has a relatively high positive value currently. This means that there are a higher number of longs present in the market right now.

Since long traders are paying a premium to keep their positions (which is why the rate is positive), the overall market sentiment is leaning towards bullish.

However, with the high open interest values, it’s possible that any large swing in the price can cause what’s called a “long squeeze,” which is an event where mass liquidations of long positions cascade together and push the price further down.

BTC Price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s price floats around $20.9k, down 2% in the last week. Over the past month, the crypto has lost 5% in value.

The price of BTC has climbed up over the past couple of days | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView

Featured image from Aleksi Räisä on Unsplash.com, charts from TradingView.com, CryptoQuant.com

Keshav Verma

Keshav is currently a senior writer at NewsBTC and has been attached to the website since June 14, 2021.

Keshav has been writing for many years, first as a hobbyist and later as a freelancer. He has experience working in a variety of niches, even fiction at one point, but the cryptocurrency industry has been the longest he has been attached to.

In terms of official educational qualifications, Keshav holds a bachelor’s degree in Physics from one of the premier institutes of India, the University of Delhi (DU). He started the degree with an aim of eventually making a career in Physics, but the onset of COVID led to a shift in plans. The virus meant that the college classes had to be delivered in the online-mode and with it came free time for him to explore other passions.

Initially only seeking to make some beer money, Keshav unexpectedly landed clients offering real projects, after which there was no looking back. Writing was something he had always enjoyed and to be able to do it for a living was like a dream come true.

Keshav completed his Physics degree in 2022 and has been focusing on his writing career since, but that doesn’t mean his passion for Physics has ended. He eventually plans to re-enter university to obtain a masters degree in the same field, but perhaps only to satiate his own interest rather than for using it as a means to find employment..

Keshav has found blockchain and its concepts fascinating ever since he started going down the rabbit-hole back in 2020. On-chain analysis in particular has been something he likes to research more about, which is why his NewsBTC pieces tend to involve it in some form.

Being of the science background, Keshav likes if concepts are clear and consistent, so he generally explains the indicators he talks about in a bit of detail so that the readers can perhaps come out having understood and learnt something new.

As for hobbies, Keshav is super into football, anime, and videogames. He enjoys football not only as a watcher, but also as a player. For games, Keshav generally tends towards enjoying singleplayer adventures, with EA FC (formerly FIFA) being the only online game he is active in. Though, perhaps due to being ultra-focused on the game, he is today a semi-pro on the EA FC scene, regularly participating in tournaments and sometimes even taking back prize money.

Because of his enthusiasm for anime and games, he also self-learned Japanese along the way to consume some of the untranslated gems out there. The skill didn’t merely remain as just a hobby, either, as he put it to productive use during his exploration for small-time gigs at the start of COVID, fulfilling a couple of Japanese-to-English translation jobs.

Keshav is also big into fitness, with agility and acceleration-related workouts making a big part of his program due to the relevance they have in football. On top of that, he also has a more traditional strength based program for the gym, which he does to maintain an overall fitness level of his body.

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