But that headline misses the deeper layer.
Yes — BTC futures OI is down 28% in 30 days.
Yes — $5.2B got liquidated.
Yes — funding has stayed below neutral for months.
Yes — Deribit delta skew is screaming fear.
On the surface? Classic bear-market checklist.
Now here’s the overlooked detail:
Open interest priced in BTC is sitting around 502,450 coins.
If you divide $34B by ~$66.4K per BTC, you get roughly 512,000 BTC — almost identical to the reported coin-denominated OI.
That changes the narrative.
The drop in dollar OI isn’t mainly traders closing positions.
It’s price compression.
BTC fell from ~$95K to ~$66K.
So the same notional BTC exposure now looks smaller in USD terms.
Think of it like this:
If your house falls from $1M to $660K but your mortgage balance stays the same, your leverage actually increases. The asset shrank — the exposure didn’t.
That’s what’s happening here.
Measured in dollars, OI “plunged.”
Measured in BTC leverage demand hasn’t disappeared — it’s roughly stable, maybe even slightly higher.
So the real question isn’t “Why is OI collapsing?”
It’s:
What happens if price starts moving again while leverage is still structurally there?
