CRYPTO OPEN INTEREST
About This Tool
This crypto open interest tracker charts hourly open interest for Bitcoin, Ethereum and more than 500 Binance USDT-M perpetual futures, with price overlaid on the same timeline. The open interest screener ranks every perpetual by open interest and shows how it changed over the last hour, four hours, day, week and month, in US dollars or in contracts. History is kept beyond the 30-day window exchanges normally provide.
What open interest measures
Open interest is the total number of futures contracts that are still open - every position that has been entered and not yet closed, liquidated or settled. Unlike trading volume, which counts every trade, open interest only rises when a new position is created and only falls when one is removed. That makes it one of the clearest gauges of how much leverage is sitting in a market at any moment, and of whether traders are committing fresh money or heading for the exit.
How open interest and price read together
Open interest is most useful read together with price. A rally on rising open interest is being carried by new positions; the same rally on falling open interest is more often shorts closing than buyers arriving. A drop alongside rising open interest suggests new shorts are being opened into weakness, while a drop with falling open interest usually means longs are closing or being liquidated. Sharp jumps in open interest also build up the leverage that can fuel a squeeze in either direction.
Why open interest is shown in USD and in coins
The USD and Coins switch exists because a dollar figure moves with price on its own. If a coin rallies 10%, its open interest in dollars rises by roughly 10% even if not a single contract changed hands. Counting contracts instead removes that effect and isolates genuine changes in positioning, which is why the screener lets you rank every token by either measure.
Where the open interest data comes from
This tracker covers Binance USDT-margined perpetual futures, one of the deepest derivatives markets in crypto, and records open interest for every listed perpetual once an hour. Figures are for Binance only, so they will be lower than totals aggregated across several exchanges. History is kept beyond the 30-day window exchanges usually expose, so longer-term trends in positioning remain visible.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is open interest in crypto?
Open interest is the total amount of futures contracts that are currently open and not yet closed or settled. Rising open interest means new positions are entering the market; falling open interest means positions are being closed. Read alongside price, it shows whether a move is backed by fresh leverage or driven by positions unwinding.
Is rising open interest bullish or bearish?
Neither on its own. Rising open interest only says that new positions are being opened, and every contract has both a buyer and a seller. The direction comes from price: rising open interest during a rally is usually read as new longs driving the move, while rising open interest during a decline points to new shorts. Either way, more open positions means more leverage in the market.
Why show open interest in coins as well as USD?
Because the dollar value moves with price even when nobody opens or closes a position. If a coin rallies 10%, its open interest in USD rises by roughly 10% while the number of open contracts stays the same. Switching to Coins counts contracts instead, so a change in the figure reflects a real change in positioning rather than a change in price.
Why is open interest here lower than on other sites?
This tracker covers Binance USDT-margined perpetual futures only. Many other sites add together open interest from several exchanges, and sometimes coin-margined contracts as well, so their totals are larger. Binance is one of the largest derivatives venues, so its trend is a reliable read on positioning, but its absolute figures should be compared with other Binance data rather than with multi-exchange totals.
How often is the data updated, and how much history is there?
Open interest is recorded every hour for every Binance USDT-margined perpetual, a few minutes after each hour closes. Binance itself only provides about the last 30 days of open interest history. This tracker keeps every hour it records, so its history keeps growing beyond that window and longer-term changes in positioning stay visible.