OVERVIEW

From Doom Scrolling To Yacht Shopping In Two Days 🤯

Here’s What’s Happening 👇️

Today’s top trending tickers: $PEPE ( ▼ 1.26% ) , $SOL ( ▲ 0.41% ) , $JASMY ( ▲ 0.63% ) , $KENDU ( ▲ 2.55% ) , and $NEAR ( ▼ 2.24% )  

ON-CHAIN ANALYSIS
Opposite Sides Of Every Trade - Funds Short, Retail Long, 25ish Times Over 😱

I hosted our first Stocktwits Live with Tradier this morning - a futures 101, heavy on oil. It's going to be a weekly-ish thing, and since my whole morning was futures, I pulled the COT report to see how people are positioned in crypto in the regulated markets.

What the COT report is

• What it shows: open interest sorted by trader type - who's long, who's short, and who's on each side.

• When it drops: Fridays, but it's a snapshot from the prior Tuesday's close.

• Where crypto lives: the Traders in Financial Futures cut - CME Bitcoin and Ether, the micros, and Coinbase's nano and perp-style contracts.

• Who to watch: Leveraged Funds (the fast hedge-fund and CTA money, the ‘professional’ big money traders) versus Non-Reportable (small traders).

A couple years ago the COT was one Bitcoin contract and a lonely micro Bitcoin line. Now it's 30 deep - $CME ( ▼ 3.15% ) standards, micros, and a whole $COIN ( ▲ 9.61% ) perp-and-nano zoo covering HYPE, ONDO, Sui, Hedera, even Zcash.

I honestly thought this would be just a small part of the newsletter, but it’s instead turned into the whole thing because some of the stats are just insane.

Leveraged funds are net short 28 of the 30 contracts. Small traders are net long 27 of them.

But let’s get into some of the nitty gritty here. 👇️ 

STOCKTWITS
Stuff Stocktwits People Said 👇️

ON-CHAIN ANALYSIS
Where Everyone Is Parked 🚗

28 Of 30, Net Short - Leveraged desks are net short almost every crypto contract the CFTC tracks, at the same time.

Retail is net short exactly three contracts, and they're the three that matter -Small traders are net long 27 of 30. The three exceptions: standard $CME ( ▼ 3.15% )  $BT_F ( 0.0% ) (-186), standard XRP (-105), standard $SOL ( ▲ 0.41% ) (-53). Those are precisely the institution-sized contracts.

The four biggest fund shorts are all Coinbase nano perps - Nano Ether perp -80,309. Nano Solana perp -24,168. Nano XRP perp -19,974. Nano Bitcoin perp -19,118. The four largest net shorts in the report, in order, and every one of them is a nano perp.

Solana is arguing with itself across venues - Standard SOL saw funds turn bullish (+540, the best swing among the CME bunch). Nano SOL perp saw funds slam on shorts (-8,746, the biggest bearish swing in the whole report). Same coin, same week, opposite bet.

ON-CHAIN ANALYSIS
What Sucks, And What Doesn’t 🤷

Sui has zero leveraged longs. Zero - Not "a few." Not "a small book." Zero long contracts held by any leveraged fund. All 2,556 are on the short side.

Avalanche is shorted 30 to 1 - 155 long. 4,737 short. A 30-to-1 lean from leveraged funds, the most lopsided real position on the board once you set Sui's shutout aside.

Cardano is a 10-to-1 short, and it's getting heavier - 712 long against 7,114 short, net short 6,402, and funds added 1,006 to it. One of the heaviest alt shorts in the book in absolute terms.

Zcash flipped net long. It's the only one that did - Every alt in the book has funds leaning short. Except Zcash, where leveraged money sits 3,142 long against 2,288 short - net long 854. And they got there in a single week, swinging +892 from a net short of 38.

STOCKTWITS
Stuff Stocktwits People Said 👇️

ON-CHAIN ANALYSIS
The Nano ‘Casino’ 🎰

Funds are short 80,309 contracts of nano Ether. Net - Nano Ether perp on Coinbase: 21,313 long against 101,622 short, net short 80,309. That is the single biggest position in the entire table by more than 3x - the next largest net short is nano Solana perp at 24,168.

A "nano" contract is carrying six figures on both sides - First off, I forgot there was a Bitcoin Cash futures product. Second, who the hell is trading it and cares about it??? Anyway, Nano Bitcoin cash: 104,500 long, 107,764 short. Over one hundred thousand contracts on each side of a product with "nano" in the name.

Retail's second-biggest long anywhere is a leveraged XRP perp - Nano XRP perp: small traders net long 4,649, second only to nano ETH perp on the retail side. Funds are short 19,974 of the same contract.

Small traders are 9-to-1 long ONDO - 757 long, 81 short on the non-reportable line - a 9.3-to-1 retail conviction lean, the most one-sided in the set. On an RWA token. Against a fund base that's net short 2,714.

ON-CHAIN ANALYSIS
What Moved? 🤔

The biggest bullish move on the board is a short getting yanked - Nano Bitcoin perp swung +18,755 in net, the largest single move in the table. Generally, that’s more of a sign of short covering than a sudden rush of conviction on being long.

The ETH short conviction best shown in the micro contract - Micro Ether: funds added 6,152 of fresh net short, the second-biggest bearish swing on the board, layered on top of an already 10,976 net short. Standard Ether is short too, but the micro is where the selling pressed hardest.

Funds are selling the hottest ticker straight into retail's hands - $HYPE ( ▼ 2.92% ) perp: leveraged money net short 2,702, and they piled on the biggest fresh short-adds of any single-name alt perp (-1,418). On the other side, small traders are net long 1,065.

Stellar has the cleanest squeeze setup in the table -
Funds net short 2,656 and adding (-360 on the week, one of the bigger short-adds). Retail net long 975 and adding (+157). If $XLM ( ▲ 1.86% ) ever catches a real bid, that's a lot of leveraged short sitting above it.

Solana retail flipped to the short side - Standard SOL small traders went from net long 44 to net short 53 (a -97 swing). Tiny in size, but it's one of the only places in the report where the two groups are doing the same thing.

XRP is the deadest ticker here - In a week where nano perps moved five figures, standard XRP barely twitched: leveraged net changed by 36 contracts, retail by 22. Everything around it is thrashing.

STOCKTWITS
Stuff Stocktwits People Said 👇️

OLD NEWS
Crypto Stuff That Happened Today, But A Long Time Ago 📜

Here’s what was happening in the newsletter a year ago today:

• The main piece introduced LAR - the Leverage Absorption Ratio, a custom metric combining price change, open-interest velocity, and volatility to see whether leverage is being absorbed cleanly or stacked like kindling near a flamethrower.

• SOL, SUI, and AVAX looked healthiest short-term - all scored above 5, meaning price was absorbing the leverage instead of choking on it.

• UMA ripped on Polymarket’s U.S. return deal - Polymarket bought QCEX for $112M, gaining a CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse, while UMA got attention because its oracle powers key prediction-market resolution.

• The RWA and DeFi side kept moving - Ondo’s USDY headed to Sei, Stellar pushed “Stable Summer,” Aave risk models looked sturdy, NEAR Intents expanded to Sui, Starknet funded validators, and LTO bailed on its L1 for Base.

OLD NEWS
Other Stuff That Happened Today, But A Long Ass Time Ago ⌛️

July 21

• 356 BC - The Temple of Artemis was burned by Herostratus

• 365 - A massive Crete earthquake sent a tsunami into Alexandria

• 1403 - Henry IV beat Hotspur at Shrewsbury, ending the Percy rebellion and giving England one more crown-defense bloodbath.

• 1545 - French forces landed on the Isle of Wight

• 1718 - The Treaty of Passarowitz was signed

• 1798 - Napoleon won the Battle of the Pyramids

• 1831 - Leopold I became the first King of the Belgians

• 1861 - The First Battle of Bull Run wrecked Union optimism

• 1865 - Wild Bill Hickok killed Dave Tutt in Springfield

• 1873 - Jesse James’ gang robbed a moving train near Adair, Iowa

• 1944 - U.S. forces landed on Guam

• 1969 - Apollo 11 lifted off from the Moon

• 1972 - Bloody Friday hit Belfast

• 1983 - Vostok Station recorded Earth’s coldest measured temperature, dropping to -128.6°F

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Author Disclosure: The author of this newsletter holds positions in AVAX, ADA, PUDGY, WLD, NEAR, INJ, LTC, LINK, ZEC, XLM, and FET. 📋