Bitcoin: As Open Interest rises, this cohort takes note

• CME was the largest Bitcoin futures exchange, having toppled Binance recently.
• Bitcoin whales were opening more longs when compared to retail investors.

Bitcoin [BTC] slid further below the $37,000 region on the 26th of November, as traders liquidated their assets and applied selling pressure on the king of cryptocurrencies.

The world’s largest digital asset had touched $38,000 before the dawn of the weekend, possibly prompting traders to book profits. The marked increase in trading volumes, as AMBCrypto observed using CoinMarketCap’s data.

Source: CoinMarketCap

As the price dropped, bullish leveraged traders felt the pinch. More than $76 million in BTC long positions were wiped out from the market in the last 24 hours, data fetched by AMBCrypto from Coinglass revealed. This amounted to 73% of all liquidations in the said time period.

CME Open Interest hits new peak

Barring intermittent retracements, the Bitcoin market has been largely upbeat about the short to medium-term prospects. The derivatives market saw significant capital inflows over the last month.

The Open Interest (OI) in BTC futures on global derivatives giant Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) soared to an all-time high of $4.4 billion at the time of writing.  With a 26% market share, CME was the largest Bitcoin futures exchange, having toppled Binance [BNB] recently.

Source: Coinglass

Since the start of the Bitcoin rally in mid-October, CME’s OI has increased by 86%. CME’s standard Bitcoin futures contract is worth five BTC and is seen as a barometer of institutional interest in cryptocurrencies.

Overall, the money invested in Bitcoin futures jumped to levels last seen just before the onset of the bear market. The wave of fresh money coming alongside a rise in price was a clear indicator of bullish sentiment.

Whales bullish on BTC?

Whale activity served as another key indicator of Bitcoin’s optimism. AMBCrypto noticed positive values of Hyblock Capital’s Whale vs. Retail Delta indicator. This suggested that whales were opening more longs when compared to retail investors.

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Crypto whales, being seasoned players in the game, invariably impact asset prices through their trading tactics. As a result, experts tend to place a higher value on their market moves.

Source: Hyblock Capital

Meanwhile, as seen in the same graph, the market was still greedy for Bitcoin. This increasing appetite could result in further demand and buying pressure for the king coin going ahead.