Bitcoin Open Interest Hits Lowest Level In 2025, Is A Pump Or Crash Coming Next?

Bitcoin is slowly stabilizing after the dramatic flash crash that briefly sent its price plunging to $101,000 last weekend. The event caused widespread liquidations across the derivatives market and rattled trader confidence, leaving market sentiment deeply shaken. 

On-chain data from CryptoQuant shows that Bitcoin’s open interest variation fell to negative 25 in the aftermath of the flash crash, its lowest reading in 2025. This decline highlights a market that has been cleansed of excessive leverage, but the question is whether this points to a major rebound or the start of a deeper correction.

Bitcoin Open Interest Sinks Into Extreme Fear Territory

According to on-chain analytics platform CryptoQuant, Bitcoin’s open interest variation, an indicator measuring changes in the total number of active futures contracts, recently entered the Extreme Fear zone. Particularly, the open interest reached a low of around negative 25 points, its lowest level so far in 2025. 

This metric had previously reached similar lows during BTC’s last major correction earlier in the year, when it dropped to around negative 25. However, the last time the Bitcoin open interest dropped below this negative 25 level was in mid-2023.

The latest reading around negative 25 shows the intense market capitulation, where over-leveraged traders were flushed out when BTC touched $101,000. Similar drops so far this year have shown moments of extreme pessimism but were followed by renewed strength once the selling pressure subsided.

Each time open interest collapsed to this degree, Bitcoin’s price found support soon after and began a steady recovery in the following weeks. This recurring pattern suggests that extreme deleveraging often precedes the formation of local or macro bottoms. 

What Does This Mean For Bitcoin?

If the crash in open interest follows a price drop, it often indicates a wave of long liquidations. This type of extremely low open interest means that most leverage traders has been fully flushed from the system, and the market is now cleaner. In such cases, it can actually be bullish in the medium and long terms.

As shown in the chart above, the last time open interest fell to negative 25 was in early April, when BTC finally ended its extended correction from above $106,000 at $76,300. What happened after was months of uptrends that finally saw Bitcoin break above $106,000 again and into new all-time highs.  

A similar performance and comparable rebound would project BTC’s price to undergo a steady 40% to 50% increase over the next multiple months. This steady increase would send Bitcoin price action back above $150,000 by early 2026.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $106,900, up by 1.4% in the past 24 hours.