NEAR drops below $5 after $20M long squeeze
NEAR Protocol (NEAR)
Editor:
Eugene Serbin
cryptocurrency.com.tr reports that NEAR Protocol has fallen into a precarious position after breaking a critical support level. The token slipped beneath the $5 mark, reaching a low of approximately $4.60 during the decline. This move triggered heavy liquidations across derivatives markets as leveraged investors faced significant losses.
Fear spread among these traders, though some buyers saw an opportunity to purchase the dip. At the time of writing, NEAR was trading around $4.70, reflecting a daily drop of nearly 8%. Trading activity surged during this selloff, with spot volume climbing 19% to $1.62 billion.
The report notes that rising volume during a price decline often indicates stronger selling pressure. The market now faces a crucial question regarding whether buyers can regain control or if selling pressure will push prices lower.
How the market reacted
Whalio's own Binance spot order flow for NEAR, measured when this story was written up on 5 October 2026. Not the outlet's figures.
NEAR is currently trading at $4.92, with short-term buy ratios sitting at 42.8% for the last hour and 41.7% for the last four hours. These figures are below the 53.8% buy ratio recorded over the past 24 hours, indicating that buying pressure is fading in the immediate term. Volume delta shows net selling of -$346,142 over one hour and -$2,795,106 over four hours, contrasting with a net buying total of +$6,229,095 for the day. The buy ratio represents the proportion of trades executed by buyers versus sellers, while volume delta measures the net value of those trades. Despite the recent negative deltas, the cumulative volume delta for the 24-hour period remains positive at +$4,579,146. Net buying occurred for 10 out of the last 24 hours, with total spot volume reaching $82,000,722 across 400,641 trades.
The latest daily buy ratio of 51.5% sits at the 77th percentile of the last 322 days, against a median of 49.7% - stronger buying than most days.
Was that an ordinary day?
The same Binance spot measurements for NEAR, averaged over the days leading up to the story.
Over the preceding week, the average buy ratio was 48.5%, making the current 24-hour ratio of 53.8% an increase of 5.2 points above the weekly average. However, spot volume has been subdued, trading at just 0.42 times the weekly average volume. Price has declined by 8.7% over the last eight days, with a total volume delta of -$41,046,789. Net buying was recorded on only 2 of the past 7 days. This suggests that while recent buying intensity is higher than the weekly norm, the overall trend remains bearish with lower volume and negative price action.