What is driving the reading
This hour 4 components score: they are listed below. Each one's reading, how it compares with the past year and its score are included in Plus, with the full hourly history and alerts.
- Open interest against market cap
- Funding
- Long/short accounts
- Nearest liquidation cluster
The components, their history and the ranking of every coin are included in Plus.
Compare plansThe gauge over time
The gauge's hourly history since 2023 is a Plus chart. Signed out or on the free plan, the chart opens as its fixed sample (2019 to 2022, or its first weeks for a young coin). Open the chart.
Did big moves follow?
For Quant, after extreme readings the median move over the next 24 hours was 2.5%, 1.26 times the 2.0% of all hours; after high readings the median move over the next 24 hours was 2.1%, 1.06 times the 2.0% of all hours. Moves are counted in either direction: the gauge says how stretched positions are, not which way the price breaks.
| Band | Hours | Spells | Median move, next 24h | Median move, next 72h | Realised volatility, next 24h | Followed by a big 24h move |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Low | 4,867 | 1,136 | 1.8% | 3.2% | 59.9% | 17% |
| Elevated | 13,870 | 2,409 | 1.9% | 3.2% | 62.2% | 18% |
| High | 7,144 | 1,782 | 2.1% | 3.4% | 65.9% | 22% |
| Extreme | 2,736 | 564 | 2.5% | 4.5% | 75.8% | 28% |
| All hours | 28,617 | – | 2.0% | 3.3% | 63.9% | 20% |
A big move is one in the largest fifth of Quant's 24-hour moves over the same hours (more than 4.3%), so one hour in five would be followed by one at random. A spell is a run of consecutive hours in the band. Every coin's record.
Short squeezes and long squeezes
A squeeze is a fast move that forces one side out: when the price rises into crowded shorts, their liquidations and stop orders buy more and push it higher (a short squeeze); a fall into crowded longs does the reverse (a long squeeze). Both need the same fuel: a lot of borrowed money, traders leaning hard one way, and liquidation levels close to the price. That is what this gauge measures for Quant.
A high reading does not say which way the price will break. In the record above, high and extreme readings were followed by larger moves than usual in either direction; our research into the same positioning data found it does not tell up from down. On Plus, the components show which side is crowded: funding and the account ratio above their usual levels mean longs are crowded, below them shorts.
How the gauge is calculated
Six components, each an hourly reading from our own collection of the exchanges' public data. Each is ranked against Quant's own readings of the past 365 days, the hour itself included, once it has at least 30 days of them: rank = 100 × (readings below + half the equal ones) / (readings − 1). One-sided components score their rank (or 100 minus it); two-sided ones score how far the rank sits from the middle, |2 × rank − 100|, since a crowd leaning hard either way is stretched. The gauge is the mean of the scores present, published when at least three score and one of them is open interest or the liquidation cluster.
- Open interest against market cap: Bybit's perpetual open interest as a share of market cap (our price times the circulating supply from our own node or token records); higher is more stretched.
- Funding: Binance's and Bybit's settled funding, each settlement as an eight-hour rate, averaged over the last 24 hours, then over the two venues; far from its usual level in either direction is more stretched.
- Futures basis: the dated futures basis, annualised, across the venues we collect; far from its usual level in either direction is more stretched.
- Long/short accounts: Bybit's long/short account ratio (the venue whose public record reaches back years); far from its usual level in either direction is more stretched.
- Hyperliquid large accounts: the dollars long per dollar short of Hyperliquid's large accounts (over $100,000 of positions; their total only, never an account); far from its usual level in either direction is more stretched.
- Nearest liquidation cluster: how far the nearer of the two densest 0.5% bands of our calibrated liquidation map sits from the price (the densest below and the densest above, within 15%); nearer is more stretched.
Not in Quant's reading now:
- Futures basis: we do not collect dated futures for Quant.
- Hyperliquid large accounts: Hyperliquid's large accounts do not trade Quant in enough size for us to publish it.
Bands, on the gauge rounded to a whole number and fixed before the record was measured: low 0 to 39, elevated 40 to 59, high 60 to 74, extreme 75 to 100. No look-ahead: every window ends at the hour it scores; an hourly input missing for an hour keeps its previous reading for at most two hours; supply is the previous day's. The liquidation map is our own model replayed over history with one fitted leverage mix, so its past bands are the model's, not a map anyone saw at the time. History is recalculated from the inputs as stored now. Hourly, updated within minutes of its inputs; the open hour is provisional until it closes.
The current reading and the record on this page are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0, crediting CryptoKeyhole with a link to this page (licence and reuse).
Questions
Is Quant overleveraged right now?
Is a Quant short squeeze coming?
The gauge cannot say which way a squeeze would go. It measures how much fuel there is: when it reads high or extreme, Quant has more borrowed money and more one-sided positioning than usual for the past year, with liquidation levels close by, and the record shows bigger moves have followed such hours. Whether shorts or longs are the crowded side shows in the components, on Plus.
What does the leverage gauge measure?
How stretched leverage is, from 0 (calm) to 100 (as stretched as the past year has been): open interest against market cap, funding, the futures basis, the long/short account ratio, the positioning of Hyperliquid's large accounts and the distance to the nearest large liquidation cluster, each judged against the coin's own past year.
How often has Quant leverage been this stretched?
Since 2023, Quant's gauge read high in 25% of hours and extreme in 10%; it was low in 17%.
How is the leverage gauge calculated?
Each component is ranked against its own readings of the past 365 days. Funding, basis and positioning count when they are far from their usual level in either direction; open interest counts when it is high, and the liquidation cluster when it is near. The gauge is the mean of the component scores, hourly.
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Readings are calculated by CryptoKeyhole from the public market data we collect, using only data that existed at each hour. The record describes what followed in the past; it is not a forecast.