Helium (HNT) jumped as much as 167% over the weekend, establishing an intra-day high of $0.989 as of this writing. Traders who arrived late are asking whether it is too late to buy HNT.

The rally was not built on buyers, but on sellers being forced out.

Why a Forgotten Token Moved So Fast

Helium runs a wireless network. Ordinary people host the hardware in their homes and shops. The industry calls this decentralized physical infrastructure, or DePIN.

The trigger was a Texas Wi-Fi deployment BeInCrypto reported on Saturday. The reaction dwarfed the news itself. HNT price, which had traded under $0.30 for most of the summer, surged by almost 170% in one weekend. Helium’s pitch has always been real customers.

In April 2025, developer Nova Labs paid $200,000 to settle SEC charges. Regulators said it wrongly claimed Lime, Nestle and Salesforce used the network. The case covered statements to stock investors, not the token.

What the Charts Actually Show

The HNT price did not climb in a straight line. It moved in two bursts, grounding from $0.33 up to $0.45 overnight. It then jumped to $0.70 by 09:00 and stalled for four hours. A second push from 15:00 carried it to $0.9782.

• HNT Volume Outlook

During the pauses, forced buying ran out. Now volume. The daily bar is the tallest on Helium’s two-year chart. Earlier spikes topped out near $45 million. This one cleared $110 million, thresholds last tested in 2023.

In total, $248.26 million changed hands, while the whole token is worth only $154.8 million. So the token changed hands more than once in a single day. Most people holding HNT now bought it this weekend, near the top.

• HNT Liquidations

Some traders had bet against HNT, borrow the token, sell it, and plan to buy it back cheaper. The price rose instead, and their losses grew with every tick. Exchanges liquidated them, closing those bets for them and bought the token back at market price.

Coinglass shows nearly $1.5 million worth of short positions were liquidated on Sunday alone and over $1.6 million across the weekend. There is almost nothing before it. Traders betting on a rise lost just $196,650.

Every forced closure is a purchase. That is how the price climbed without new buyers arriving. Traders call this a short squeeze.

• HNT Funding Rates

Next comes the funding rate, the clearest chart of the five. On these markets, one side pays the other a small fee every few hours.

For eight months that fee sat flat at zero. This weekend it fell past minus 1.2% on a single payment. Traders betting against HNT now pay the ones betting on it.

“The funding rate on Bybit HNT-PERP was close to -1000% this last print. A $60m market cap token with real users, with a chart that has no resistance for another 150%, down 99% from ATH. Shorts are trapped paying crazy funding with no spot supply,” one trader observed.

Finally, open interest. This is the total money riding on these bets. It shows the number of all open long and short positions for HNT price.

It jumped 197.6% to $13.64 million, the highest in about a year. When those bets get closed out, this number falls. Here it nearly tripled instead.

They are not surrendering, with new money and fresh capital entering the futures market as new contracts are created for HNT.  They are being replaced faster than they are cleared out.

As HNT price rises alongside rising open interest, it signals strong bullish momentum. It shows high-conviction, aggressive bullish breakout driven by explosive leveraged demand.

Is It Too Late to Buy HNT?

That squeeze is already cooling, as HNT peaked at $0.989 and now trades near $0.88. Forced buying has nearly stopped. Only $22,920 of bearish bets closed in the most recent hour (as of this writing), against $1.61 million across the day.

Traders watching this setup tend to treat a vertical spike in open interest as a warning rather than an entry. Positioning is stretched, and a sharp drop can trigger a chain of forced closures in the other direction.

The signal they wait for is open interest flattening, or easing slightly, while the price holds. That combination suggests the market has accepted the higher level rather than simply leveraged into it.

Funding is the second gauge, and HNT reads in reverse of the usual case. A crowded long market shows sharply positive funding. Here it is deeply negative, so the crowd is still short and paying to stay there.

A move back toward zero would mean those bets have been closed or abandoned. The buying that came from forced closures stops at that point, and the price has to hold on ordinary demand.

One supply point favors holders, but with a caveat. Every HNT minted so far is already trading, so no locked block is waiting to vest. Issuance continues toward a 223 million cap though, with about 37 million still to come.

Once funding returns to zero, ordinary demand must hold Helium price data alone. Anyone buying now is betting on a second squeeze, not the first.

Source: BeInCrypto