Traders betting against ACE paid an unusually steep fee to hold their positions over a ten-minute window, showing heavy one-sided selling pressure.
Imagine ACE is trading around $0.175. Suddenly, a rush of traders arrives wanting to bet that the token will drop, creating a severe imbalance with far more people betting down than up.
Over ten straight minutes, the fee charged to these downward bets hit -0.0765% and stayed pinned near -0.0723% every minute, while the token price barely moved around $0.1757.
Crypto contracts use a regular cash transfer between traders called a funding rate. When too many people bet down, the system charges them a fee that gets paid directly to the traders betting up to encourage balance.
A single minute of high fees could be a brief glitch. But ten consecutive alerts mean traders were willingly paying continuous cash penalties just to keep their downward bets open.
A deeply negative fee does not mean the price will crash. If ACE rises even a little, sellers paying high fees may panic and buy back their positions to cut losses, which can launch price upward in a short squeeze.
Do not think: everyone is betting down, so the price must fall. Think: the trade is overcrowded on the downside, making the market brittle and prone to sharp reversals.