Options Bets Turn Defensive Ahead of a Bitcoin Price Showdown

Key Takeaways

• Coinglass metrics show bitcoin futures open interest at $54.82B, with Binance holding $11.24B.
• Deribit options hold 288,409.93 BTC in calls, giving bulls 60.89% of open interest.
• Deribit, Binance and OKX show Sept. 25 max pain near $70K-$73K, putting downside in focus.

Across major futures venues, 695,020 BTC in open interest translates to $54.82 billion, according to this weekend’s derivatives data from Coinglass. Aggregate open interest slipped 0.26% over one hour and 0.38% over four hours, but remained 1.15% higher over the last day. That combination looks more like traders shaving exposure around the edges than heading for the exits.

Binance Leads the Pack as $54.82B Stays in Play

The largest crypto exchange by volume, Binance, controls the largest slice, carrying 142,500 BTC, or $11.24 billion, representing 20.5% of tracked futures open interest. CME follows with 116,040 BTC worth $9.15 billion on Sunday and a 16.69% share. CME’s footprint matters because it’s a clean gauge of institutional positioning.

MEXC holds another $5.01 billion, followed by Bybit at $4.58 billion and Gate at $4.57 billion. OKX accounts for $2.79 billion, Bitget $2.16 billion, and Kucoin $1.62 billion. Most major venues lost open interest over the last four hours this Sunday, while BingX jumped 34.50% and Bitunix climbed around 1.29%. Apparently, not everyone got Sunday’s memo to lighten the book.