The deleveraging event was triggered by forced liquidations and the aggressive unwinding of leveraged positions. According to analyst Darkfost from CryptoQuant, this phase represents the sharpest deleveraging since 2023 and the largest liquidation event of the current market cycle.
Open interest for Bitcoin futures on Binance briefly fell below its 180-day moving average. Despite this dip, the current open interest on the platform remains at $9.6 billion, which is higher than the 180-day moving average of $8.3 billion.
Binance currently holds approximately 37% of the total Bitcoin open interest across all cryptocurrency exchanges. Traders have already returned to the market, pushing open interest levels back above the 180-day average and supporting a price rebound.
Current open interest levels on Binance exceed those recorded during the May 2026 recovery, when Bitcoin's price climbed toward $82,000. This follows a previous deleveraging phase that lasted eight months, from October 2025 to May 2026.
During that prior period, Binance's BTC open interest hit a bottom near $6.4 billion in March 2026 before rising to approximately $8.96 billion by May. At that time, the 180-day moving average was around $8.75 billion.
