At 09:52 UTC on Monday, October 5, volume in Binance’s RLC perpetual jumped from somewhere between $1,000 and $15,000 a minute to about $90,000. The spot book answered two minutes later, and by the day’s close the price had doubled.

iExec RLC closed Sunday at $0.3644 on Binance spot and traded near $1.07 at 13:00 UTC on Friday, October 9, a rise of about 194% in seven days according to Coinglass. Spot volume on Binance went from $123,904 on Sunday to $31.3 million on Monday.

📖 Related ReadingMINA Price Down 51% as Funding Turns Negative and Mesa Rally Fades →

MINA price fell 51% from its October 5 high as Binance funding flipped negative and open interest nearly doubled.…

The iExec RLC Perpetual Moved First

Binance’s one-minute futures candles show quarter-hour readings between $1,148 and $14,877 of volume before the move. Then 09:52 printed $90,559, 09:53 printed $138,793, and 09:54 printed $398,173. The spot candle for 09:54 did $86,852, with price going from $0.3935 at the 09:45 close to $0.4251.

TradingView 30-minute chart of RLC/USDT on Binance over one month showing a flat range near 0.35 and then step-like surges since October 5, with a spike wick to 1.49 and the RSI pane below
TradingView, RLC/USDT, 30-minute candles on Binance, October 9. The staircase starts October 5.

More bursts followed. The 05:00 and 11:00 UTC hours on Tuesday reached $0.9434 and $1.0770. Thursday’s 17:00 hour touched $1.0845. Friday’s 06:00 UTC hour printed $1.4880, closed at $1.2830, and by the next hour’s low it was back at $1.0029.

No iExec RLC Announcement Lines Up

iExec’s own X feed ran explainer posts on confidential computing through Tuesday. Its one market-related post is from Wednesday, October 7, announcing RLC on Aster DEX, and it quotes Aster. Aster’s listing post went up at 06:27 UTC that day for an RLC perpetual with up to 5x on offer, which is after the first three bursts and before the last two.

Screenshot of iExec RLC's X post of October 7 that reads RLC lands on Aster DEX, quoting Aster's post announcing a new RLC perp listing
iExec’s October 7 post and the Aster notice it quotes.

None of the recent entries in Binance’s listing, news, activity and delisting sections mention RLC. CoinGecko’s iExec RLC page counts all 86.99 million tokens as circulating, so no unlock sits behind it either. Peers did not follow: AKT slipped 1.3% over 24 hours, FET fell 5.2% and RENDER 4.0%, while BTC rose 0.8%.

Futures Volume Dwarfs Spot

Coinglass shows $882.98 million of iExec RLC futures volume over 24 hours against $103.20 million in spot. That is 8.6 times as much. Binance’s RLC/USDT contract alone traded $666.66 million.

Coinglass iExec RLC futures markets table with Binance RLC/USDT volume of 666.66 million dollars, Bybit 91.08 million, MEXC 41.94 million and Gate 40.53 million
Futures venues ranked by 24-hour volume on Coinglass. Binance leads by a wide margin.

Open interest on iExec RLC across venues reads $40.51 million, about 44% of the $92.66 million market cap. On Binance, open interest history climbed from $1.49 million at 00:00 UTC Monday to $26.47 million at 08:00 UTC Tuesday, then eased to $16.53 million by noon Friday. Price is higher now than at that peak, so some positions were closed or liquidated along the way.

Coinglass iExec RLC header showing price 1.0557, futures volume 882.98 million dollars, spot volume 103.20 million, market cap 92.66 million, open interest 40.51 million and a circulating supply of 86.99 million
Coinglass header, Friday afternoon UTC. Futures volume against spot volume is the first thing to read.

On-chain trading is a rounding error here. Eight pools on DEX Screener traded $175,873 over 24 hours, set against roughly $248 million across all venues per CoinGecko.

Shorts Paid Longs the Whole Way

Funding on Binance’s iExec RLC contract was negative in 90 of the 92 settlements since October 3, which means shorts were paying longs almost every time. The 16:00 UTC settlement on October 5 came in at -2.00%, the cap Binance lists for this contract.

Coinglass counted $5.22 million of liquidations in 24 hours, $3.57 million of it shorts. A liquidated short is closed with a market buy. Crowded shorts plus thin spot is a plain recipe for a squeeze, though the data cannot say how much of any one burst came from forced buying.

Coinglass iExec RLC liquidation panel showing 24 hour liquidations of 5.22 million dollars, 1.65 million long and 3.57 million short
Liquidation totals on Coinglass: 1h, 4h, 12h and 24h windows.

Account ratios were split. Binance’s long-short account ratio read 0.96, top traders by accounts 0.86, top traders by positions 1.10.

RSI Near 89, Four Lines to Watch

Daily RSI(14) for iExec RLC stood at 88.9 on TradingView at 13:16 UTC. Before October 5 the ceiling was $0.3886, set October 2, and no daily high since August 25 beat it. The token trades about 93% under its May 10, 2021 high of $15.51, per CoinGecko.

TradingView daily chart of RLC/USDT on Binance from March to October with a long flat base and a near vertical rise in October, and the daily RSI pane reading 88.94
TradingView daily chart, Binance, at 13:16 UTC Friday. The RSI pane reads 88.94.

Four levels frame the next sessions on the hourly chart: Friday’s high at $1.4880, Thursday’s high at $1.0845 just above price, Friday’s low at $0.8340, and Thursday’s low at $0.6515.

Binance spot 1-hour candlestick chart of RLC/USDT with solid horizontal lines at 1.4880, 1.0845, 0.8340 and 0.6515
Hourly candles with the four levels, Binance spot, through 13:00 UTC Friday.

A 1-hour close above $1.0845 reopens $1.4880. A 1-hour close back under $1.0807 cancels that.

A 1-hour close below $0.8340 points to $0.6515 first, then the $0.3886 pre-move ceiling. A close back over $0.8375 cancels it. BTC trades near $83,000, above its 100-day average of about $72,500, so the market backdrop is not the weak side here.

The iExec RLC price has no clear side right now. RSI is stretched, yet shorts are still paying and still getting liquidated. Other thin-float moves covered on this site include GTC, NMR and MINA.