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Traders in the perpetual futures market tied to the BNB token are leaning bearish as the embattled cryptocurrency faces a challenging environment on multiple fronts. Data tracked by Coinglass show open interest and volume-weighted funding rates in perpetual futures have slipped to -0.18%, the lowest since late April. Those numbers mean shorts, or positions that profit from a price drop, are dominant, and are willing to pay longs to keep their bearish bets open. Funding rates are charged every eight hours. “BNB is being heavily shorted,” Huff Haus, co-founder of Pear Protocol, said, referring to the deeply negative funding rates.

The native token of decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator 1inch (1INCH) rose by more than 58% early Monday before giving back most of the gains. Trading volume hit $597 million, its highest level since October, 2021. At press time 1INCH was higher by about 10% over the past 24 hours. Coupled with a spike in trading volume, $3.37 million in leveraged 1inch short positions have been liquidated over the past 24-hours, according to CoinGlass. While there was no immediate catalyst evident, 1inch’s rally appears to be a continuation of the uptrend begun following’s XRP supposed legal victory against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last week. XRP nearly doubled that day, leading a rally in the altcoin sector that included sizable gains for tokens like Solana’s (SOL), Cardano’s (ADA) and Polygon’s (MATIC).

The Bitcoin hashrate continues to hit all-time highs as competition between miners escalates ahead of the next halving event, JPMorgan (JPM) said in a research report Thursday. Expected to take place in the second quarter of 2024, the halving will reduce issuance rewards to 3.125 BTC from 6.25 BTC, “implying a reduction in miners’ revenues, effectively increasing Bitcoin’s production cost at the same time,” the report said. “While Bitcoin halving is seen as having a positive effect on the bitcoin price given the production cost acted historically as a floor, it poses a challenge for bitcoin miners,” analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou wrote.

– Omkar Godbole