Perpetual futures open positions grow 13% across 15 venues in one week

Open interest in perpetual futures contracts jumped 12.8% across 15 tracked venues during the week of September 13-19, a pace of growth that suggests traders aren’t waiting for fresh capital to flow in. They’re squeezing more out of what’s already on the table. What the numbers actually tell us Perpetual futures are derivative contracts that let traders bet on an asset’s price without the contract ever expiring. They’ve become the dominant instrument in crypto derivatives trading, offering flexibility that traditional futures can’t match. The aggregate open interest across the broader crypto futures landscape has been fluctuating between roughly $68 billion and $140 billion in recent weeks, depending on how many venues are counted and which methodology is applied. At the lower end, one snapshot covering 25 venues pegged the figure at approximately $68.39 billion. A broader measure placed it closer to $140.23 billion. That gap isn’t necessarily contradictory. Different data providers track different sets of exchanges, and the definition of “open interest” can vary based on whether you’re counting notional value, coin-margined contracts, or stablecoin-margined positions. Decentralize...