Traders betting against SKR paid unusually steep hourly fees to keep their positions open, revealing extreme seller crowding across a 10-minute window.
Imagine SKR is trading near $0.024. An overwhelming majority of traders want to bet that the price is heading lower, leaving almost nobody willing to take the opposite side.
Between 12:51 and 13:00 UTC, the cost to hold those sell bets stayed stuck at an extreme rate near -0.41% per hour, while the price drifted from $0.0242 down to $0.0237.
Crypto contracts use a funding rate mechanism to balance the market. When too many people bet on a drop, those short sellers must pay regular cash payments directly to buyers just to keep their contracts open.
A single alert could just be a brief blip. But ten consecutive alerts mean traders were so determined to short SKR that they willingly burned significant capital every hour just to stay in the trade.
Heavily negative funding does not mean price will definitely crash. If price starts rising, sellers paying high fees may rush to close positions at the same time, which can trigger a rapid spike upward.
Don't think: heavy shorting means the price is guaranteed to fall. Think: the market boat is leaning hard to one side, making the trade expensive and prone to sudden volatility.