BTCUSDT · Perpetual futures
Bitcoin open interest and funding
How much money sits in open BTC positions on Bybit, Binance and OKX, what a long costs to hold right now, and how both numbers moved over the past month.
15,45 Mrd. $ sits in open BTC positions on Bybit, Binance und OKX·56 % of accounts sit long·a long costs +3,2 % a year on average, from 0,0 % on Binance to +6,4 % on Bybit
Our own series, written once a minute since the collector started.
Where the money sits
The same contract behaves differently on each venue: its own book, its own crowd, its own payout interval. A gap in the annualized column between two rows is a gap somebody is already trading.
| Exchange | Open interest | In coins | Funding | Annualized | Interval | Long / short |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bybit | 5,01 Mrd. $ | 59.273 BTC | +0,0058 % | +6,4 % | 8h | 1,30 |
| Binance | 8,05 Mrd. $ | 95.157 BTC | 0,0000 % | 0,0 % | 8h | 1,23 |
| OKX | 2,40 Mrd. $ | 28.325 BTC | +0,0030 % | +3,3 % | 8h | 1,23 |
What moves bitcoin funding
Bitcoin carries the deepest perpetual book of the three venues, and that depth keeps funding boring most of the time. Basis desks borrow dollars, buy spot, sell the perpetual and collect the rate, so any drift above the baseline gets sold back down within a few payout periods. Funding sitting quietly near baseline while open interest climbs is usually the carry trade growing, not directional leverage.
Two things break the pattern. The first is a fast move with nothing to borrow against: the rate runs to several times baseline and stays there for a day or two, because the arbitrage side cannot source spot quickly enough. The second is the opposite, funding turning negative while price holds, which means shorts are paying to stay short and somebody has taken the other side in size.
Reading open interest against price
Open interest on its own says nothing about direction. It only says how much money has a position. Paired with price it becomes readable: rising together means new money is entering, rising while price falls means shorts are being built, and a sharp drop with no price move usually means positions were closed rather than wiped.
The drop worth watching is the one that arrives with a price spike in either direction. That is a liquidation cascade, and on bitcoin it clears one to three percent of open interest in minutes. We do not chart liquidations yet, but the hole they leave shows up on this chart immediately.
Is this the same contract on all three venues?
It is the same underlying and the same USDT margin, but three separate contracts with three separate books. Contract sizes, payout intervals and leverage limits differ, which is why the rows above never match exactly.
What happens at the payout time?
Every payout period each venue settles funding between longs and shorts at the rate shown. Nothing goes to the exchange. Holding through the payout is what the annualized column prices: at twelve percent a year, a long that sits for a month gives up about one percent of its notional.
Why is the long/short ratio above one while price is falling?
The ratio counts accounts, not money. Retail crowds tend to lean long into weakness, so a ratio above one during a drawdown is ordinary and says more about positioning than about the next move.
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