BTC Funding Rates Go Negative While Price Pumps 5% — Short Squeeze Incoming?

Bitcoin just tagged $66,243 with a clean +5.2% daily candle — and here's the kicker: funding rates have turned negative. That means shorts are paying longs. In a rising market. At extreme fear. You do the math.

The Setup

Negative funding + rising price is the classic short squeeze recipe. Traders opened shorts expecting continuation lower, and now they're getting squeezed as BTC rips through resistance. Every tick higher forces more liquidations, which pushes price even higher. It's a beautiful feedback loop if you're long.

Market cap: $2.37T. BTC dominance: 56%. Fear & Greed: 11 (Extreme Fear). This is textbook capitulation turning into forced buying.

Whale Activity Confirms the Thesis

Our whale tracker lit up today: 64.6 BTC, 36.5 BTC, 23.6 BTC, 18.3 BTC — all moving in the same direction. When whales accumulate during negative funding, the squeeze isn't a maybe. It's a when.

Price Targets

If this squeeze plays out, the next major resistance sits around $68-70K. Break that with momentum and we're looking at a retest of the $72K zone. The bears are trapped and they know it.

SOL (+9.5%), LINK (+9.6%), and AVAX (+14%) already front-ran this move. If BTC catches up, the entire market is about to get very interesting very fast.

Shorts are fuel. And BTC just lit the match.