Bitcoin price prediction: shorts pay the deepest funding in three months as puts gain demand

Something shifted on the derivatives market on Friday morning that the price alone does not show: anyone betting on a falling bitcoin price now has to pay for it. The funding rate on OKX's largest bitcoin perpetual stood at minus 0.0064 percent at the 9 a.m. CET settlement. It had not been that low since early August. At the same time, bitcoin was trading at around $68,800, or €62,200, according to CoinGecko, a little more than 6 percent below the previous day.

What the data show: after the slide below $70,000, the short side is so crowded that it is paying the long side, and for the options expiry on November 27, downside protection is clearly more expensive than a bet on the upside. Our assessment follows further down: negative funding is not a buy signal but an indication of where the leverage now sits. Where the price could head over a horizon of months is set out in the scenarios of our bitcoin price prediction.

Funding rate turns negative: what happened on Friday morning

The funding rate is a payment between holders of long and short positions in perpetual futures, the futures contracts with no expiry date. OKX settles it every eight hours. If the contract trades above the spot price, longs pay shorts. If it trades below, shorts pay longs. That keeps the contract close to the real bitcoin price without it ever expiring.

Normally the longs pay. OKX funding includes a fixed interest component of 0.01 percent per settlement, and that was exactly the figure shown on OKX's funding overview as late as 1 a.m. Eight hours later, after the drop to an intraday low of $67,500, it had become minus 0.0064 percent. For the current period, the exchange even showed minus 0.0072 percent in the late morning.

We analysed the 285 settlements since August 10 that OKX publishes. Only 23 of them were negative, and none was as low as Friday morning's. The previous low in this series dates from October 22, at minus 0.0047 percent. How funding affects a single position in euros and percent is worked through step by step in our guide on the funding rate on perpetual futures.

Open interest falls 10 percent: leverage is being unwound

The second signal comes from open interest, the value of all futures contracts not yet closed. For all bitcoin contracts on OKX, it stood at $3.86 billion at 11 p.m. UTC on Thursday and only $3.46 billion at 8 a.m. UTC on Friday. That is a decline of a little more than 10 percent in nine hours. Over the same period, the price fell by just under 4 percent.

The gap shows that it was not only the value of positions that fell; positions actually disappeared, through forced liquidations or voluntary profit-taking. We pulled together the overnight figures in the morning article bitcoin price falls below $70,000: more than $1.3 billion in crypto futures were liquidated within 24 hours. The question here is what comes next. Who is still in the market after the clear-out, and on which side?

The answer from funding: the remaining leveraged bets lean to the short side. That fits a market in which many longs from the previous week were stopped out and in which, after the break below $70,000, bets on further losses were added rather than new bullish positions.

Bitcoin price since Thursday: the $73,125 level has fallen

Thursday's bitcoin price prediction focused on the falling mining difficulty, with levels of $73,125 below and $75,451 above. Bitcoin was trading at around $73,700 at the time. The lower level did not last a day: on Thursday afternoon the price slipped beneath it, and the daily candle on Kraken closed at $71,370. Overnight came the drop to $67,500.

That leaves bitcoin clearly below its 200-day moving average as well. Calculated from Kraken's daily closes, it runs at around $73,040. The 50-day moving average, at around $80,550, is now a good 17 percent above the price. Over 30 days, bitcoin has lost almost 18 percent according to CoinGecko, and a little more than 9 percent over seven days.

The mining difficulty adjustment discussed on Thursday is expected on Friday evening. The reduction eases pressure on miners but changes nothing about the situation on the derivatives market. Overnight, the pressure came from leveraged positions and from a macro backdrop of rising bond yields, not from miners.

Options expiry on November 27: 39,600 bitcoin in puts

A look at the options market completes the picture. On Deribit, the largest venue for bitcoin options, contracts for the monthly expiry on November 27 covered 41,950 bitcoin in calls and 39,618 bitcoin in puts on Friday morning. A call is the right to buy bitcoin at a fixed price, a put the right to sell it at a fixed price. At the current price, the whole expiry corresponds to a notional value of around $5.6 billion. The figures come from Deribit's public interface and match Deribit's open interest statistics.

That puts the put-to-call ratio at 0.94. For the December 25 expiry it is only 0.72. Short-term protection is therefore in much greater demand than long-term protection. Most puts for the end of November sit at $58,000, with just under 3,960 bitcoin, followed by $69,000 with 3,537 bitcoin, $70,000 with 3,409 bitcoin and $72,000 with 3,321 bitcoin. Among calls, the $90,000 strike leads with a little more than 5,070 bitcoin, a bet that is deep out of the money with the price below $70,000.

Max pain at $78,000: what the figure tells you

The so-called max pain point is the price at which buyers of all options in an expiry would together lose the most. According to our calculation from Deribit data, it sits at $78,000 for November 27, around 13 percent above the current price. It is no more than a rough guide. The figure says nothing about where the price is heading, only where the sellers' open bets would expire most cheaply.

Bitcoin put skew: protection costs almost 11 points extra

More telling than the number of contracts is the price of protection. Implied volatility, the fluctuation priced in by the options market, stood at 46.3 percent on Friday morning for the $62,000 put. For the $76,000 call, a similar distance from the current price, it was 35.5 percent. The gap of 10.8 percentage points is called skew. It shows that investors are paying considerably more for protection against a further decline than for the chance of a recovery.

Notably, Deribit's DVOL volatility index barely reacted. It stood at 39.8 points on Friday and 40.1 on Thursday, and moved between 38 and 42 over the past ten days. Overall, the market is therefore not expecting wilder swings than before, but it is clearly pricing the direction lower. The Fear & Greed Index from alternative.me fell from 28 to 20 points at the same time and is now in extreme fear territory.

Negative funding in August and October: two cases, two outcomes

Whether negative funding heralds a recovery can be tested against the past three months, and the answer is mixed. On August 18, the rate on OKX turned to minus 0.0017 percent. Bitcoin closed that day at $64,677 on Kraken. Three days later it stood at $78,327, a gain of 21 percent. The shorts who had bet on further losses had to cover, pushing the price even higher. That is the classic short squeeze.

On October 22, funding was considerably lower, at minus 0.0047 percent. Bitcoin closed at $81,316 at the time. No squeeze followed: seven days later the price was 4.3 percent lower, and 6.6 percent lower after 14 days. The shorts were proved right, because selling from the spot ETFs and from large investors kept up the pressure.

The difference between the two cases lies in the backdrop. In August, bitcoin was at a low after weeks of sideways movement, and sellers were exhausted. In October, a downtrend was just beginning that continues to this day. Today's situation looks more like October: the price is below its 200-day moving average, and the macro backdrop is still weighing on it.

Bitcoin levels: $67,500 below, $73,040 above

The data point to the following levels for the coming days. The first support is Friday's intraday low of $67,500. Below that lies the August 19 low of around $64,100, the last day bitcoin traded this low before the late-summer rally. The real floor is the area around $62,200 to $62,500, where the price turned higher several times in early and mid-August.

On the upside, the path is lined with resistance. The first hurdle is the November 10 low of $72,585, which previously served as support. Just above it runs the 200-day moving average at around $73,040. Only a daily close above it would change the picture on the chart. For a short squeeze like the one in August, the price would also have to clear the puts at $70,000 and $72,000, where many hedges are concentrated.

Our assessment: leverage has been flushed out, the direction has not been settled

In the newsroom's view, negative funding suggests that the bulk of the excess leverage has left the market. The evidence is the drop of a little more than 10 percent in open interest in a single night and the fact that, for the first time in three months, shorts are paying this clearly. A further slide should therefore trigger fewer forced sales than the one in the night to Friday.

On the other hand, the options market is clearly buying downside protection, with a put skew of almost 11 points and a put-to-call ratio of 0.94 for the end of November, and the price is below its 200-day moving average. The comparison with October 22 shows that negative funding alone does not bring a turnaround. Our reading: as long as bitcoin stays below $73,040, any recovery is more likely to be technical. A fall back below $67,500 would open the way to the August zone around $62,200.

Buying bitcoin after the slide: exchange or ETP

If you are considering an entry after the decline, buying on the spot market gets you real bitcoin without leverage. An exchange with a MiCA licence holds your coins under European supervision; which providers are licensed in the EU and what they charge is shown in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges. If you would rather hold bitcoin in a securities account, our guide to buying crypto ETFs in Germany explains the routes via exchange-traded products.

How gains and losses on bitcoin are taxed depends on where you live, and tools that record your trades for that purpose are compared in our overview of crypto tax software.

Bitcoin funding: below $73,040, the recovery remains technical

1. Set your price levels: Note $67,500 and $73,040 as boundaries. If you want to buy bitcoin directly, the licensed providers are listed in the exchange comparison.
2. Check your leverage: If your liquidation level is in the zone around $62,200, one more slide is enough. Without leverage, bitcoin can also be held in a securities account, as the guide to buying crypto ETFs in Germany shows.
3. Document your losses: If you sell at a loss, you need clean records for your tax return. Suitable tools are compared in our overview of crypto tax software.

(As of November 13, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)