OPEN INTEREST
How much money is riding on Bitcoin futures
What is still open at the end of the day, and how it splits between contracts settled in dollars and contracts settled in Bitcoin.
Open interest across 3 exchanges
Recorded on all 6 contracts, across 3 exchanges.
Right now
90.6% of it is settled in dollars
$23.66 billion sits in contracts settled in dollars and $2.45 billion in contracts settled in Bitcoin. A dollar-settled contract behaves the way most people expect. A Bitcoin-settled one pays out in coin, so what it is worth in dollars moves with the price even when nobody trades it.
The numbers
behind the chart
What does the current reading show?
Open interest: the latest reading is $15.08 billion, on . The highest reading since is $16.56 billion on ; the lowest is $12.15 billion on .
A contract here is one exchange's version of the bet. The dollar-settled and the coin-settled versions count separately, so an exchange can carry more than one. Two sets of exchanges are published side by side and never spliced into one line: the widest set the site follows, and the three with the longest record. Joining them would draw a step change on the morning an exchange arrived and label it a market move. These stopped trading or paused, and are no longer counted: BitMEX on 16 Sep 2026, one Bitget contract on 17 Sep 2026 and Coinbase International on 1 Oct 2026.
What are the latest, highest and lowest readings?
| Measure | Latest | Highest | Lowest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open interest | $15.08 billion | $16.56 billion | $12.15 billion |
How do the readings compare with earlier dates?
| Reference date | Open interest |
|---|---|
| 1 month ago | $15.38 billion |
What was the reading at each month’s end?
| Reading date | Open interest |
|---|---|
| $14.54 billion | |
| $14.58 billion | |
| $12.57 billion |
Understanding
Bitcoin Futures Open Interest
Where it stands today
There is $26.11 billion riding on Bitcoin futures as of .
$23.66 billion of it sits in cash-settled contracts as of .
$2.45 billion of it sits in coin-settled contracts as of .
Open interest is the value of every futures position that is still open. It rises when new money takes a position and falls when a position is closed, whichever way it was pointing, so it measures how much is at stake rather than which side is winning. Rising open interest alongside a rising price usually means new money arriving on the up side; rising open interest alongside a falling price usually means the same on the down side.
A contract settled in dollars behaves the way most people expect: the position is worth a fixed number of dollars per unit. A contract settled in Bitcoin pays out in coin, so its value in dollars moves with the price even when nobody trades. Both are counted here and shown separately.
Some exchanges publish the sum of both sides of every position and some publish one side. Counting them the same way would overstate the total by about a sixth, so each exchange is counted on one side before anything is added up. Where an exchange's convention is not established, it is left out of the total and out of the chart rather than guessed at, and the count of what was left out is on this page.
Two views of the same number run side by side on this page and are never joined into one line. The wider one covers every exchange here and is the more complete picture; it is also the younger, because it only begins on the first day all of them reported. The narrower one is three exchanges with months of history behind it. A single line spliced from both would draw a step upward on the morning the other exchanges arrived and it would look exactly like a market move.
A contract here means one exchange's version of the bet. Most exchanges list two, one settled in dollars and one settled in Bitcoin, and they are counted separately. That is why one exchange can carry more than one contract, and why the coverage line under a reading sometimes counts contracts and sometimes exchanges.
Source: Read from the exchanges' own published contract records, 9 of them, once a day. A contract here is one exchange's version of the bet. The dollar-settled and the coin-settled versions count separately, so an exchange can carry more than one. Reading for .