Open interest, funding, and liquidations

Open interest, funding rate, and liquidations show what is happening in the perpetual futures market: how many positions are open, which side pays to hold its position, and who is being forced out of the market. All three open their own pane below the chart. You'll find them under Top bar → Indicators → Order flow. The “Order flow” view in the Layers panel adds open interest and funding right away.

The panes are available for symbols traded as perpetuals. For others, the menu shows “no data” with the note “AAPL has no derivatives data.”

Common to all three

Source: aggregated or one exchange

In the settings, under Source, you choose whether the pane combines the exchanges (Aggregated, the default) or shows only one. The pane header names the selected source, for example “Aggregated” or “Bybit”.

The pane header

The header shows the name, the values at the crosshair, and the source. What the header shows is set in the chart settings under Status line. While the data is loading, the pane says “Loading…”.

If you scroll back, the pane loads older values.

Open interest

The sum of all open futures positions. Each position is counted once, meaning one side.

How to read it:

• If open interest rises with the price, new positions are entering the market and carrying the move.
• If it rises while the price falls, many new shorts are building up, or longs are buying into a falling market.
• If it falls sharply, positions are being closed, often through liquidations. A sharp drop with a large candle is often a flush, after which the market calms down.

With the unit USD, the terminal converts open interest to dollars using each candle's closing price.

Funding rate

The funding rate of perpetual futures. When it is positive, longs pay shorts; when it is negative, shorts pay longs. Above zero, the curve is drawn in the positive color, below zero in the negative color.

How to read it:

• Slightly positive is the normal state in a rising market.
• Strongly positive means many traders want to be long and are paying for it. The market is one-sided, and pullbacks hit many leveraged longs.
• Negative means shorts are paying. If the price rises despite negative funding, shorts can get squeezed.

Time basis: Exchanges pay funding at different intervals. The terminal therefore shows all rates on the same time basis, “per 8 hours” by default. “1h” divides by eight, and “Annualized” extrapolates to a full year. Funding is paid only at fixed times.

Liquidations

Forced closures of long and short positions per candle. Long liquidations (red) are forced sells, short liquidations (turquoise) forced buys.

How to read them:

• A large red spike after a price crash is a long cascade. Such spikes often mark a provisional low because the weak hands are out.
• A large turquoise spike with a rising price is a short squeeze.
• Read liquidations together with open interest: if open interest falls at the same moment, the move was mainly a reduction of leverage.

Gaps in the pane: Candles that have no data yet and hours without data are shaded gray. A candle with more than half of its data missing shows “–” instead of a number, so that a gap doesn't look like a quiet market.

More on liquidations on the chart is under Liquidations in the Order flow section.

What about the basis?

The premium of futures over the spot price isn't available as a pane but as the Basis & term structure widget (Top bar → Widgets) for BTC and ETH. More on this under Data widgets.