Bitcoin Funding Rates Fall To 2020 Lows On Binance — Fuel For Further Upside?

After multiple weeks hovering below $80,000, Bitcoin finally broke above the psychological level on Monday, May 4th. The premier cryptocurrency enjoyed a significant surge in bullish momentum, pushing its price to as high as $82,000 over the past week.

While the Bitcoin price has slowed over the past couple of days, most indicators point to the market leader being in bullish territory, at least in the short term. For instance, a specific on-chain metric suggests the BTC price is on the verge of another leg up.

Is A Short Squeeze Imminent For BTC?

In a recent Quicktake post on the CryptoQuant platform, market analyst CryptoOnchain discussed a significant occurrence in the Bitcoin derivatives market. Fresh on-chain data shows that BTC’s Funding Rates on Binance have dropped to -0.002, a new multi-year low. 

The relevant indicator here is the 50-day Simple Moving Average of Bitcoin’s Funding Rates on Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume. As highlighted by CryptoOnchain, this metric, which measures the periodic fee exchanged between traders in a cryptocurrency’s derivatives market, has fallen to its most negative level since the post-COVID crash in April 2020.

Typically, negative funding rates imply that short traders (investors with sell positions) are paying a fee to long traders (investors with buy positions), as they bet against the price of the cryptocurrency (Bitcoin, in this case). “Prolonged negative funding rates at this magnitude indicate absolute dominance of bearish sentiment and aggressive short-selling,” CryptoOnchain said in their Quicktake post.

Furthermore, CryptoOnchain noted that history provides some context for why the current Funding Rates could be good for Bitcoin’s price. The analyst explained that when the derivatives market was “skewed towards the shorts” in the past, BTC experienced “short squeezes” that provided rocket fuel for further upside.

For context, a short squeeze is a phenomenon in which an asset’s price experiences a rapid surge, forcing short traders to buy to cover their losses from the initial surge and subsequently triggering a self-enforcing wave of buying pressure. CryptoOnchain noted that these latest on-chain dynamics strongly suggest that the $80,000 region could be the start of the next upward phase. 

Bitcoin Price At A Glance

As of this writing, the price of BTC is around $80,132, with no significant change over the past 24 hours. According to CoinGecko data, the premier cryptocurrency is up by more than 2% in the past seven days.