SKR recorded sustained negative funding rates near minus 0.16 percent over ten minutes. This shows sellers were paying high continuous fees to maintain bets on falling prices.
Imagine SKR is trading around $0.0211. A huge crowd of traders wants to bet that the price will drop, but almost nobody wants to bet it will rise. To keep the market balanced, those betting on a drop must pay a continuous fee to anyone willing to take the other side.
Across ten straight minutes, this balance fee stayed unusually deep in negative territory, starting at minus 0.1597 percent and barely easing to minus 0.1555 percent. The persistent negative number shows extreme, unbroken one-sided demand to bet against SKR.
This mechanism is called the funding rate. In perpetual trading contracts, it acts as a regular payment between traders. When the rate turns negative, short sellers betting on lower prices must pay fees directly to long buyers betting on higher prices.
Think of it like a theater where everyone is rushing toward the exit doors at once. The doorway is so jammed that people are paying a premium just to stay in line to leave. That cost adds up every minute the crowd refuses to disperse.
A single spike in the funding rate can be a momentary quirk. When the rate fires ten consecutive alert warnings over ten minutes, it proves the crowd is stuck paying those high fees without finding quick relief or enough buyers to balance the market.
A deeply negative rate does not guarantee the price will keep falling. If sellers tire of paying fees and close their positions, buying back the asset can trigger a sharp, sudden price surge called a short squeeze. The price could drop, spike, or drift sideways.
Do not think that heavy selling automatically means the price will crash lower. Think of it as a market stretched so far to one side that holding down bets is becoming expensive and risky for the crowd.