BTC price dices with $52K as CME Bitcoin futures OI hits record $6.8B

Bitcoin (BTC) returned to the center of an intraday trading range into the Feb. 18 weekly close as bulls profited from weekend trading.

BTC/USD 1-hour chart. Source: TradingView

Trader: Bitcoin rally “healthy” despite OI surge

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed $52,000 acting as a focal point for BTC price consolidation.

The largest cryptocurrency saw a dip to $50,680 on Bitstamp the day prior, marking its lowest levels in several days.

A swift rebound added nearly $1,500 in the hours that followed, however, and at the time of writing, the lows had not seen a fresh retest.

Analyzing the week’s action, popular trader Skew flagged a change in trader behavior in the latter half of the Wall Street trading week.

Spot buying, he revealed, had subsided toward the weekend, with “mostly taker driven dips & bounces since.”

“So far seeing some spot buyers return here with binance spot leading,” he wrote on the day.

$BTC Market thread continued, in partnership with @_WOO_X $BTC Aggregate CVDs & Delta
Using Spot CVD here we can see notable divergences with price which I’ve marked out as red circles (limit selling into price)

On LTF there was a change in flow around the 15th – 16th which is… https://t.co/tDAJYsrw5I pic.twitter.com/mJLgKJnPst

— Skew Δ (@52kskew) February 18, 2024

Meanwhile, burgeoning open interest (OI) on CME Group’s Bitcoin futures markets hitting a record $6.8 billion was indicative of volatility to come, per data from monitoring resource CoinGlass.

CME Group Bitcoin futures open interest (screenshot). Source: CoinGlass

Discussing open interest more broadly, however, popular trader Daan Crypto Trades noted a divergence when this was denominated in BTC.

“This +100% rally from October has been healthy in terms of leverage imo,” he argued.

“Funding has mostly kept it’s neutral rate and open interested denominated in $BTC is lower. In USD value of course it has gone up during this time as the underlying asset (BTC) went up in value.”BTC/USDT chart with open interest and funding rates data. Source: Daan Crypto Trades/X