Traders betting against SKR paid unusually high ongoing fees to keep their positions open across ten straight minutes, signaling extreme one-sided selling interest.
Imagine SKR is trading around 0.023 dollars. A large crowd of traders rushes in at once to bet that the price will fall, trying to profit from a potential drop.
Because so many people wanted to bet on a price drop compared to buyers, the system charged sellers a regular fee that was transferred directly to buyers. Across ten minutes, this hourly fee stayed deeply negative around minus 0.12% to minus 0.1384%.
This fee is called the funding rate. When it turns deeply negative, short sellers betting on lower prices must pay long buyers just to keep their trades open, which happens when selling interest heavily outweighs buying interest.
A single spike can happen in a flash, but seeing ten consecutive alerts over ten minutes means sellers were willing to bleed cash continuously just to hold onto their aggressive downward bets.
This does not guarantee that the price of SKR will crash. If the price ticks up even slightly, those crowded sellers might rush to exit all at once to stop paying fees, triggering a sharp move upward called a short squeeze.
Do not think a negative funding rate means an asset is guaranteed to fall. Think of it as an overcrowded room where traders are paying an expensive entry fee, making the market unstable in both directions.