#Gate广场五月交易分享

Bitcoin funding rate drops to 2020 lows—could this be a catalyst for further gains?

After hovering below $80k for several consecutive weeks, Bitcoin finally broke through this psychological barrier on Monday, May 4th. This leading cryptocurrency experienced a strong upward momentum, with prices soaring to... a high of $82,000 over the past week.

Although Bitcoin's price has slowed down in recent days, most indicators suggest that, at least in the short term, this market leader remains in a bullish trend. For example, a specific on-chain indicator shows that Bitcoin's price is about to enter a new rally.

Is Bitcoin about to face a short squeeze?

In a recent Quicktake article on the CryptoQuant platform, market analyst CryptoOnchain pointed out... a significant event in the Bitcoin derivatives market. The latest on-chain data shows that the Bitcoin funding rate on Bn exchange has fallen to -0.002, hitting a multi-year low.

The relevant indicator here is the 50-day simple moving average of Bitcoin funding rates on Bn (the largest cryptocurrency exchange by global trading volume). As CryptoOnchain noted, this indicator measures the periodic exchange of fees between traders in the crypto derivatives market and has now dropped to its lowest level since the COVID-19 pandemic crash in April 2020.

Typically, a negative funding rate means that short traders (investors holding sell orders) need to pay fees to long traders (investors holding buy orders) because they are betting on the price of the cryptocurrency (in this case, Bitcoin) to decline. CryptoOnchain stated in its Quicktake article: “Such a large and prolonged negative funding rate indicates that bearish sentiment and aggressive short-selling dominate the market.”

Additionally, CryptoOnchain pointed out that history can explain why the current funding rate might be favorable for Bitcoin's price. The analyst explained that in the past, when the derivatives market was “biased toward shorts,” Bitcoin experienced a “short squeeze,” which provided strong momentum for further upward movement.

As background, a short squeeze refers to a rapid increase in the asset's price, forcing short traders to buy to cover their initial losses, which then triggers a self-reinforcing wave of buying. CryptoOnchain noted that these latest on-chain dynamics strongly suggest that the $80,000 region could be the starting point of a short squeeze.