Bitcoin is trading at $66,810 as of 10 a.m. Eastern time on Sunday, and across futures and options markets, traders are leaning defensive. The data tells a clear story: open interest is contracting, puts are moving faster than calls, and max pain levels on every major exchange sit well above where spot is trading.
Key Takeaways:
- Bitcoin futures open interest across all exchanges fell to $46.94B, with Binance and CME leading at $8.09B and $7.24B.
- Put volume on Deribit outpaced calls 54.87% to 45.13% in 24 hours, signaling short-term defensive trader positioning.
- Deribit max pain for the April 24 expiry sits near $70K, roughly $3,000 above $BTC’s current $66,810 spot price.
Bitcoin Futures Open Interest Falls to $46.94B
Total bitcoin futures open interest (OI) across all exchanges stands at 703,140 $BTC, equivalent to $46.94 billion, according to Coinglass futures stats. That figure has pulled back meaningfully from the peaks seen in late 2025, when exchange-level open interest briefly touched the $100 billion range alongside $BTC prices near $140,000.
Binance leads all venues with 121,250 $BTC in open interest worth $8.09 billion, holding a 17.23% market share. CME follows closely at 108,480 $BTC, or $7.24 billion, representing 15.42% of total futures open interest globally. OI across the board is softening. CME posted a 0.49% drop in open interest over the past 24 hours. Binance fell 0.96%, OKX shed 0.31%, and Bybit declined 0.20%.
MEXC and Hyperliquid were the outliers, each logging slight gains of 0.63% and 8.03%, respectively. BingX posted the biggest 24-hour OI jump at 31.77%, though its total footprint of $588.47 million remains a fraction of the top-tier venues. The overall market recorded a modest 1-hour OI change of negative 0.32%, with the 24-hour aggregate up just 1.27%.
The Options Playing Field
On the options side, total $BTC options open interest has pulled back sharply from the peak of roughly $65 billion seen in early 2025, when bitcoin was testing highs above $100,000. Current options open interest sits near $30 billion, based on metrics collected by Coinglass. Deribit remains the dominant options venue, with calls outpacing puts in overall open interest at 56.75% versus 43.25%. In raw terms, that breaks down to 243,090 $BTC in calls versus 185,259 $BTC in puts on Deribit.
When it comes to actual trading volume over the past 24 hours, puts won the day. Bearish contracts accounted for 54.87% of all options traded, with 9,512 $BTC in puts moving versus 7,824 $BTC in calls. The busiest single contract was a April 24 put at the $62,000 strike, meaning traders paid to protect themselves in case bitcoin falls below that level before expiry.
The biggest open interest positions are split between December 2026 bets on bitcoin reaching $120,000 and a put at $60,000 for the same date, each holding over 6,000 $BTC in size. Closer in, the April 24 put at $62,000 carries 4,648 $BTC in open interest. That contract pays out if bitcoin drops below $62,000 before April 24 settlement, and enough traders own it to make it worth watching.
CME options open interest by expiration bucket via Cryptoquant shows a notable rotation. As of early April, the dominant concentration sits in the one-to-two-month expiry range, with longer-dated contracts filling in modestly below. The overall CME options OI by contract count has dropped to roughly 10,000 contracts, near its lowest level since mid-2024.
The put-versus-call breakdown on CME shows puts consistently dominating the stacked open interest by USD value since November 2025, a pattern that has held even as price partially recovered from its lows near $65,000. Max pain levels on Deribit show the April 24 expiry clustered near $70,000, with notional value for that date reaching approximately $6 billion.
Max Pain Curves
Deribit’s max pain curve peaks around $77,000 to $78,000 at the June 26 expiry before pulling back toward $75,000 through the September and December 2026 contracts. On Binance, max pain for the April 24 date sits near $71,500, while the June and September contracts carry max pain levels pushing toward $90,000. OKX shows a similar April 24 max pain near $71,000, with the September 2026 contract carrying a max pain reading close to $80,000.
All three venues share a common theme: with spot bitcoin sitting at $66,810, current prices sit roughly $3,000 to $4,000 below the nearest max pain concentration at the April 24 expiry. That gap creates gravitational pull, at least in theory, as options market makers have an incentive to see price drift higher into settlement. Whether the broader macro environment or Trump’s statements allow that drift is another question entirely.
The current pullback in both open interest and price is consistent with prior mid-cycle consolidation phases. Derivatives traders watching the April 24 expiry will find the $62,000 put and $72,000 call strikes carrying the most open interest weight at Deribit in the near term. The $75,000 call at the same expiry also sits in the top tier by open interest. With spot at $66,810, the market is positioned between those strikes, leaving outcomes reasonably open in either direction as expiry approaches.
Right now, bitcoin‘s derivatives market is telling a cautious story, and the upcoming expiry is the next real test.
