Key Takeaways:
Hedera’s native token (HBAR) is showing signs of a potential price floor after its price dropped 5.2 percent over the last 24 hours, with derivatives data from April 16, 2026, revealing deeply negative funding rates for perpetual futures contracts.
"The funding rate for HBAR perpetual swaps has fallen to as low as -0.05% on major exchanges," a report from Coinglass highlighted on Thursday. "This implies that traders opening short positions are paying a significant premium to those holding long positions."
The negative funding occurred alongside a falling cumulative volume delta (CVD), which tracks the net difference between buying and selling volume. The declining CVD suggests that while sellers have been aggressive, their momentum may be waning. This combination of expensive short positions and potentially exhausted selling pressure often precedes a local bottom in the market.
These market dynamics set the stage for a potential "short squeeze." If HBAR's price sees a slight recovery, short sellers could be forced to buy back the asset to cover their positions, adding to the buying pressure and potentially triggering a sharp rally. The next key resistance level for HBAR is watched at the $0.15 mark.
The current market structure for HBAR presents a notable contrast to other major layer-one networks like Ethereum and Solana, where funding rates have remained closer to neutral in the same period. Hedera, a public distributed ledger based on a hashgraph consensus algorithm, aims to provide faster and cheaper transactions for decentralized applications.
Data from DefiLlama shows the total value locked on the Hedera network stands at approximately $95 million. While smaller than many rivals, a sharp reversal in the HBAR token price could attract new capital and developer interest to its ecosystem. Traders will be closely monitoring the funding rate and open interest in the coming days to see if the short-squeeze scenario materializes.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
