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BITCOIN EXCHANGE COMPARISON

Which Exchange Leads on Each Reading?

The same reading on every exchange that publishes it, side by side and in order. Where the bets are biggest, what they cost to hold, which way the crowd leans, how deep the book is, and how much actually trades.

Usually daily

20 readings across 6 subjects. Every exchange named here has a page of its own for the reading beside it, and nothing on this page is added up: these are separate venues measuring the same thing, not parts of one total.

Open interest

Binance carries 3.9 times the open bets Bybit does.

Most money riding on open bets first. Ranked across 3 of the 6 exchanges we record; the rest do not publish this reading.

ExchangeMoney riding on open betsRecent move
Binance$9.52 billionup 18.8% over 30 days
OKX$2.65 billionup 4.7% over 30 days
Bybit$2.45 billionup 13.0% over 30 days

Open interest: the total value of futures positions still open at the end of each day. It grows when new bets are opened and falls when they are closed. Measured on .

Funding rate

Holding a long costs most on Binance at 0.0212% a settlement, and least on OKX at 0.0091%.

Most expensive place to hold a long first. Where the rate is negative it is the shorts who are paying. Ranked across 3 of the 6 exchanges we record; the rest do not publish this reading.

ExchangeWhat it costs to bet on a riseRecent move
Binance0.0212%up 48.2% over 30 days
Bybit0.0148%down 18.2% over 30 days
OKX0.0091%up 9.2% over 30 days

Funding rate, added up across the day's settlements. Positive means the people betting on a rise paid the people betting on a fall. Negative means the other way round. Measured on .

Long/short ratio

OKX has the most accounts leaning up at 1.585 for each one leaning down, and Binance the fewest at 0.763.

Most accounts betting up, for each account betting down, first. Ranked across 3 of the 6 exchanges we record; the rest do not publish this reading.

ExchangeBetting up vs betting downRecent move
OKX1.585down 1.5% over 30 days
Bybit1.328up 1.8% over 30 days
Binance0.763up 7.5% over 30 days

Long/short ratio across all accounts. Above 1 means more accounts are betting the price goes up than down. Measured on .

Liquidations

Bybit closed out 1.7 times the up-bets OKX did.

Most up-bets closed out by force first. Ranked across 2 of the 6 exchanges we record; the rest do not publish this reading.

ExchangeUp-bets closed out by forceRecent move
Bybit$5.1 milliondown 40.4% over 42 days
OKX$3.0 milliondown 40.1% over 43 days

Long liquidations: positions betting on a rise that the exchange closed automatically because the price moved against them too far. Measured on .

Order book depth

Kraken shows 3.6 times the resting buy money Bybit does.

Deepest resting buy money within half a percent of the price first. Ranked across 4 of the 6 exchanges we record; the rest do not publish this reading.

ExchangeQueued to buy within half a percent of the priceRecent move
Kraken$24.4 millionup 28.8% over 30 days
Binance$15.9 milliondown 4.1% over 30 days
Coinbase$13.0 millionup 12.8% over 30 days
Bybit$6.8 milliondown 1.8% over 30 days

Orders resting on the buy side no more than half a percent below the middle of the book, averaged across the day. The tightest rung, so it is the one that moves first when the book thins out. Measured on .

Trading volume

Binance trades 12 times what Bitstamp does.

Most traded first. Ranked across 5 of the 6 exchanges we record; the rest do not publish this reading.

ExchangeMoney tradedRecent move
Binance$1.51 billionup 230.3% over 30 days
OKX$424.2 millionup 392.6% over 30 days
Coinbase$404.2 millionup 104.4% over 30 days
Kraken$161.4 millionup 338.3% over 30 days
Bitstamp$126.1 millionup 208.5% over 30 days

Spot volume in dollars, priced hour by hour rather than at one closing price, so a busy hour is not repriced by a later move. Measured on .

Everything we measure at an exchange
The directory: reserves, volume, depth, open bets, and a page per venue.
The market-wide bet
Open interest, funding and positioning added up across every venue we record.
The market-wide order book
What is queued near the price across the venues, in one view.
What the exchanges hold
The coins in their wallets, and whether more are arriving or leaving.

Understanding Bitcoin Exchange Comparison

Where it stands today

Binance leads the 3 exchanges we compare on open interest at $9.52 billion as of .

Binance leads the 3 exchanges we compare on funding rate at 0.0212% as of .

OKX leads the 3 exchanges we compare on long/short ratio at 1.585 as of .

Bybit leads the 2 exchanges we compare on liquidations at $5.1 million as of .

Kraken leads the 4 exchanges we compare on order book depth at $24.4 million as of .

Binance leads the 5 exchanges we compare on trading volume at $1.51 billion as of .

Every number on this page already exists on a page of its own. What was missing was the comparison. If you wanted to know where holding a position costs the most today, you had to open three exchange pages and hold three numbers in your head, and the market-wide pages could not help: they publish the gap between the highest and lowest venue without ever saying which venue is at either end.

Each table ranks one reading and says how many exchanges it covers, because that is the first thing a ranking has to be honest about. Only three of the six publish a funding rate, only four run an order-book recorder, and a ranking of three read as a ranking of the market would be worse than no ranking at all. The exchange names are links, so any row opens the page that shows that reading over time.

Nothing here is added up, and the bars are not shares of a total. These are separate exchanges measuring the same thing, so adding two of them together would produce a number that describes no market. Each bar is simply how large that row is next to the largest row in its own table.

The move beside each reading names the window it actually measured. Some of these series began in July and some in September, so a column headed thirty days would be wrong for half the rows. Where a recorder skipped a day the window stretches to cover the same number of readings, and the sentence says so rather than quietly counting rows as days.