In the $RIVER market rally, extreme negative funding rates are gradually squeezing out the shorts. You can see that the holding costs are accumulating every hour—imagine how much pressure this puts on short-term traders, making frequent liquidations almost an inevitable choice.

Such violent price fluctuations are essentially controlled by the big players behind the scenes. They use price manipulation to clear leveraged positions—an old trick that’s been around forever. Those contracts that get liquidated eventually become targets for liquidity harvesting.

Currently, market sentiment is very conflicted. On one hand, the negative funding rates signal bearishness; on the other hand, some are still chasing the bottom. But from a fundamental perspective, such extreme funding rate conditions usually don’t last long—either the bulls break through strongly or the bears completely surrender. What $RIVER will do next depends on the direction choices in the coming trading days.