Crypto-margined Bitcoin futures fall to 12% of open interest

Crypto-margined Bitcoin futures now account for about 12% of open interest across exchanges, down from nearly 100% in 2019 and 2020, according to Glassnode's long-run metric. The shift means leveraged traders increasingly use stablecoins rather than Bitcoin itself as collateral, avoiding the risk that a falling Bitcoin price simultaneously weakens both the position and its margin buffer. Bitcoin rebounded from around $57,000 to a weekly close near $79,175 and was up about 1.88% today, following months of low-volatility trading between $60,000 and $68,000. Over the past 24 hours, $570.08 million in positions were liquidated, including $329.60 million in shorts and $240.48 million in longs. Bitcoin-related liquidations totaled $295.41 million, while the largest single loss was a $103.54 million BTC position on Bitget, according to CoinGlass. The liquidation wave was a short squeeze, but it was not causally linked to the longer-term shift in collateral. Institutional and fiat-market activity, including Coinbase's U.K. derivatives trading through Hyperliquid with up to 50x leverage, $854 million flowing into Bitcoin ETFs over five days as rate-hike bets faded, and Strategy reducing its Bitcoin holdings, is consistent with a market increasingly settled in dollars. The data suggests the Bitcoin squeeze may not be over, although leverage remains a risk regardless of whether it is backed by dollars or coins.

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