Open interest: what it is and how to read its change
Open interest is the total of all positions still open on an instrument. It shows how much money is sitting in the market right now, and its change shows whether money is arriving or leaving.
Volume tells you how much was traded over a day; open interest tells you how many positions stayed open. These are different things: you can trade a billion and close everything by evening, or quietly build a position and hold it.
Four combinations worth memorising
- Price up, interest up — new buyers arriving, the move is funded.
- Price up, interest down — shorts closing. There is a rally, but no fuel under it.
- Price down, interest up — short positions being built.
- Price down, interest down — longs leaving, the move is running out of breath.
Why the hourly change matters
The absolute value says little: bitcoin's open interest is always enormous. What matters is speed — a sharp inflow within an hour means someone just stepped in, and the next move will carry leverage.
A percentile instead of a bare number
Next to open interest we show where it sits in the past month's distribution. “Interest rose 8%” means nothing until you know whether that has happened before. The percentile answers it: an ordinary day or a rare event.
Questions and answers
How is open interest different from volume?
Volume is how many trades went through in a period. Open interest is how many positions are open right now. A trade can raise it, lower it, or leave it unchanged, depending on whether the two sides are opening or closing.
Is rising open interest a good sign?
It is neutral. Meaning appears only together with price: interest rising into a rally and into a sell-off mean opposite things.
Why do spot pairs have no open interest?
Because spot has no positions — it has coins. Open interest exists only for derivatives: futures and options.
Where open interest is changing fastest
| Coin | Value | Details |
|---|---|---|
| AIOZ | -65.0% | $4.8M |
| PRL | +15.2% | $6.6M |
| TIA | +12.2% | $73.2M |
| S | +11.6% | $21.9M |
| FLOKI | +8.5% | $21.2M |
| CNPY | +7.4% | $3.5M |
| VVV | -7.0% | $182.6M |
| BTW | -6.8% | $178.0M |
Hourly change for coins with turnover above five million dollars. Check the direction against price — the meaning only reads as a pair.