Altcoins are getting weird
I saw something today that I don't really understand. Altcoin futures open interest is apparently higher than Bitcoin's now, which I haven't seen in a while. But then the ETF numbers don't look that great for alts compared with BTC. So what does the open interest actually mean here? Are people just piling into alts with leverage or something?
I saw that too. I wouldn't assume it's people actually buying altcoins though. Futures can get really busy without people loading up on spot.
Wait, so higher open interest doesn't mean more people are buying? 😭 I thought that's basically what it meant.
Not really. It just means there are more futures positions open. Could be longs, could be shorts. You need more info to know which way people are leaning.
Weird altcoin tape usually means rotation into thin narratives where screenshots outrun liquidity. I treat that as a filter problem first: holders, LP depth, and who is dumping into the bounce. On-chain glance I use when the board gets noisy: https://gmgn.ai/r/79XCfNUq. Most weirdness is just leverage + FOMO — DYOR / NFA.