Open Interest, explained

Source

CoinGlass

daily, back to the start of the record

Assets covered

5

BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, BNB

Exchanges shown

Top 10

the rest grouped as "Others"

Shows

Dollar totals

the reported figures, no score added

Open Interest (OI) is the total value of every futures and perpetual contract that is currently open — bought or sold but not yet closed, expired or settled. It is measured in US dollars and summed across every exchange this chart tracks, giving a single figure for how much borrowed-money exposure — leverage — is riding on an asset at any moment.

A contract counts once whether it is long or short. That matters: OI on its own says nothing about which side the market is leaning toward, only how many positions are open in total.

Volume measures how many contracts changed hands in a given period and resets to zero every day. Open interest measures how many contracts are currently open and only moves when a position is created or closed.

A trader closing one position and opening another shows up as volume but leaves OI unchanged. A new trader opening a fresh position — with someone on the other side of it — adds to both. High volume with flat OI usually means existing positions are being traded between participants, not that fresh money is entering the market.

From CoinGlass, which collects open interest exchange by exchange and reports it daily in US dollars. The history runs back several years — to roughly early 2020, though the exact first date depends on when each exchange began reporting to CoinGlass.

Five assets are covered: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP and BNB. The price line drawn over the top follows whichever one you select, using CoinGlass's own price for that coin, lined up with the same daily points as the open interest figures.

Each exchange contributes its own daily open interest figure, and the total line is all of them added together, day by day. For the "By Exchange" view, exchanges are ranked by their most recent figure and the top 10 get their own line. Everything past the top 10 is added together as a single "Others" line, so the total is always complete even though only the largest venues are shown separately.

The exchange table below the chart adds 1h, 4h and 24h percentage moves per exchange — where each venue stands right now, rather than over the history.

No. Unlike the cycle-timing and on-chain indicators on this site, Open Interest has no colour-coded zone, no threshold and no 0–100 score on top of it. What you see is the dollar total and the per-exchange breakdown as CoinGlass reports them. Any fixed band drawn across leverage figures would need constant re-tuning as new exchanges list and old ones fade, so the figures stand as reported.

Open interest tells you how much is at stake. It never tells you, by itself, who is going to win.

Watch open interest and price together, not open interest alone. Rising open interest with rising price suggests new bets on the way up. Rising open interest with falling price suggests new bets on the way down. Falling open interest in either direction usually means traders are closing out rather than adding.

Watch concentration, not just the total. The exchange breakdown flags where the leverage is sitting. A big pile stacked on one venue means a sharp move on that exchange can force a cluster of positions to be closed out at once, which tends to accelerate the move rather than absorb it.

Open Interest is a derivatives positioning indicator: it measures how much leverage is currently open, not whether an asset is cheap, overbought, or due for a cycle turn. It says nothing about valuation or on-chain holder behaviour — for that, this site's on-chain and cycle-timing indicators are the better read.

It also isn't one of the 14 weighted inputs behind the Bitcoin or Ethereum Heatmeter score — it stands on its own. It pairs most naturally with the funding rate, the fee traders pay to keep a position open: a positive funding rate alongside high open interest flags a market crowded with borrowed bets on the way up, while negative funding with high open interest flags a crowd leaning the other way — and the risk of a sharp move back against them.

Others in market structure — How much borrowed money is in the market, which way bets are leaning, and where money is moving.

• LiquidationsWhere leveraged positions were forcibly closed, long against short.
• Altcoin Season IndexCoinGlass’s published 0–100 rotation index, with 80 and above marking Altcoin Season and 20 and below Bitcoin Season.
• Altcoin Strength IndexA weekly 0–100 score for altcoins against Bitcoin, where 0 means historically cheap and 100 historically expensive.
• Bull Market ProgressHow far roughly thirty cycle-peak indicators have travelled toward their historical top readings.
• Funding RateWhat leveraged traders pay to hold their positions — the cost of crowd consensus.

Every indicator we track — the full glossary.