Open interest rose 22% while the price climbed. Then the price doubled and open interest fell 17%.
Same coin, same day, two completely different moves.
Open interest is the number of futures contracts still open. It grows when new positions are opened and falls when positions are closed or liquidated. On its own it does not show direction: every long has a short on the other side. Read it next to the price.
Picture 1 is one day of $AKE (15m candles, 13 Nov 2026): price on top, open interest in contracts in the middle, liquidations at the bottom.
Morning: price up, OI up. New positions were opened into the rise.Evening: price almost doubled, OI dropped, and the biggest short liquidations of the day printed. The move was made by shorts being closed, not by new buyers.After the top: liquidations stopped and OI started to grow again. New positions came back.
One trap most people fall into: open interest in dollars. It rises with the price even when nobody opens anything. During that evening move, OI in contracts fell 17%, while OI in dollars rose by more than half. Watch OI in contracts.
Picture 2 is the other side of it: where positions were opened by price. $BTC over 24 hours: 23.0K BTC opened, 32.8K BTC closed. 43% of all new positions sat in one narrow zone, 68,666-69,071, right at the current price. Many traders with the same entry in one place, so the reaction of price around that zone matters more than a random level on the chart.
Open interest does not predict price. It shows where the leverage is and what drove the move.
Both charts are from PumpGlass, free.
#OpenInterest #Bitcoin #CryptoTrading #Futures #Liquidations