Bitcoin (BTC) Futures Open Interest Surges to 26-Month High

• At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $51,499 as per data from CoinMarketCap.
• Open interest in perpetuals and standard futures is above $23 billion.

Based on data compiled by CoinGlass, the notional open interest—the monetary value embedded in the quantity of open or active bitcoin (BTC) futures contracts—has reached its highest point in 26 months.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $51,499 as per data from CoinMarketCap, while open interest in perpetuals and standard futures was above $23 billion. Midway through November 2021, when bitcoin was trading over $65,000, the open interest count reached a record $24 billion, a gain of 22% from the previous year.

Upswing Validated

A combination of a price increase and a resurgence in interest in leveraged instruments like futures indicates a flood of fresh capital leaning bullishly and validates the upswing. The recent availability of spot ETFs in the U.S has been largely responsible for the 28% rally in Bitcoin in little over three weeks.

On the other hand, leverage may increase gains or losses. Therefore, many people believe that a sharp increase in futures open interest portends price instability. But market leverage is still very modest, so there’s little chance that investors would sell their long (buy) positions all at once, causing prices to plummet. The market is known to experience increased volatility, both bullish and bearish, after mass liquidations.

According to CryptoQuant’s statistics, Bitcoin’s projected leverage ratio has lately increased from 0.18 to 0.20, which is still much lower than the levels seen in August of last year. Additionally, according to CoinGlass, the top of 660,000 hit in October 2022 is much higher than the current futures open interest of 430,500 BTC terms.

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