On the surface, decentralized exchange (DEX) SushiSwap’s native token SUSHI has not quite had a spectacular 2026 yet. On a year-to-date (YTD) basis, the cryptocurrency is down 26.5 percent, trading at $0.20 as of Wednesday. However, Binance’s on-chain data tells a bullish story.
SUSHI price weakens but accumulation strengthens
SUSHI’s 7-day average netflow to Binance crypto exchange has fallen down to -169,117 tokens, indicating a significant -708 percent structural deviation from the 3-month baseline. It conveys that while the token is losing price, there is quiet accumulation happening in the background.
The divergence between SUSHI’s price and net exchange flows becomes more prominent when examined from both sides of Binance’s order flow. On a week-over-week basis, total inflows to Binance have collapsed by 81 percent.
In contrast, the total outflows from Binance have climbed by 51 percent, suggesting a classic “flow scissors” pattern. This pattern signals shrinking liquid supply on exchanges, which can indicate accumulation behavior and potential supply-side tightening if the trend persists.
In the same vein, between May 11 and May 19, SUSHI reserves on Binance slumped from 68.55 million to 67.31 million – a net drain of 1.24 million tokens in 8 days. The current level of 67.31 million reserves is close to the 6-month mean of 66.6 million SUSHI.
SUSHI price, despite its recent weakness, is still carrying a 4.4 percent premium compared to its 3-month average. Taken together, the three-layer divergence (price decline, inflow drought, rising exchange outflows), are creating conditions that have historically preceded supply-crunch rallies.
Overall DeFi weakness weighing on SUSHI
Even though the aforementioned three-layer divergence predicts a bullish short-term price trajectory for SUSHI, the overall weakness in the DeFi space makes it hard to be long-term bullish on any of the so-called “blue chip” tokens.
For example, leading lending protocol Aave’s AAVE token is still stuck around its 2024 price level despite dominating the DeFi ecosystem over the past 2 years.
Lack of cross-chain liquidity from the Bitcoin network is also evident from the low number of active WBTC wallets.
That said, SushiSwap competitor Uniswap continues to achieve new milestones. On May 6, Uniswap recorded $3 trillion in all-time volume on the Ethereum mainnet.