BTC: Futures Longs and Shorts Opened (Estimated)
Shown as its 2–31 Oct 2026 sample; the latest readings and full history are included with Plus.
Estimated USD value of BTC perpetual long and short positions opened in each period, from rises in open interest and the side that traded aggressively.
Why use it. Shows which side is adding leverage. Longs that pile in near highs, or shorts that pile in near lows, are positions a turn can force out. How to read it. Each bar splits the period's new positions into longs (opened by aggressive buyers) and shorts (opened by aggressive sellers); a bar dominated by one side shows which way new leverage leans.
Calculation. For each perpetual contract, the change in its open interest between two consecutive samples of our collection is credited to the side that traded aggressively on that venue over the same interval, from our own trade-by-trade capture of the venue's public perpetual trade feeds (its taker buying minus taker selling): open interest up while takers were net buyers counts as longs opened, up while they were net sellers as shorts opened, down while they were net sellers as longs closed, and down while they were net buyers as shorts closed. An interval whose open interest did not change counts nothing; one without taker flow, or one our capture did not cover throughout, is left out. Each interval's amount is spread over its minutes by the venue's taker volume in each, so a period's longs and shorts opened minus closed add up exactly to the change in open interest credited in it. Linear contracts are valued at the contract's mark price, inverse contracts at their USD face value. This is an estimate: every change in open interest has a buyer and a seller, one long and one short, and the rule credits it to the side that crossed the spread, so it shows which side was pushing, not who holds what. Venues: Binance (its USD-margined contracts), Bybit, OKX, Bitget, Gate, Hyperliquid, KuCoin, HTX, Crypto.com and Kraken. Deribit is left out because from 10 November 2026 it publishes open interest eight hours late, so its changes cannot be credited as they happen; Bitfinex and Coinbase Derivatives because we do not capture their trades. Source: our own minute-by-minute collection of public futures data from Binance, Bybit, OKX, Bitget, Gate, Hyperliquid, KuCoin, HTX, Crypto.com and Kraken (open interest, one side of each position; Hyperliquid and Bybit publish both sides, which we halve), and our own trade-by-trade capture of the same venues' public perpetual trade feeds, which began on 20 October 2026 (OKX and Kraken on 23 October 2026). Venues we do not collect are not included, so totals understate the whole market. History starts on 20 October 2026; no earlier values are reconstructed.