Two markets on one coin
Options give the buyer a right tied to a strike and expiry; perpetual futures provide ongoing leveraged exposure with funding and margin requirements. Their open interest (OI) measures outstanding positions, not new trading volume. The BTC and ETH options vs perps charts compare the same underlying in USD notional terms, then place two positioning snapshots beside each other.
Options OI as % of perp OI
Options notional = sum(OI in coin × index price), after contract-size normalization, across eligible options and all expiries. Options OI as % of perp OI = options notional / perp OI × 100. Both numerator and denominator are USD notionals for the same coin. This is a size comparison, not a share of the combined options-plus-perps market.
Illustrative: not live data. Assume every option uses the same index price in this synthetic example:
| Input or result | Illustrative value |
|---|---|
| Options OI in coin | 20,000 BTC |
| Index price | $100,000 |
| Options notional | 20,000 × $100,000 = $2.0B |
| Perp OI in USD | $8.0B |
| Options OI as % of perp OI | $2.0B / $8.0B × 100 = 25% |
Notional is not delta-adjusted exposure. Delta measures sensitivity to a small underlying-price move. Far out-of-the-money options can have much smaller delta-adjusted exposure than their full notional; delta also changes with price, time and volatility. The ratio does not measure premium paid, margin posted, net portfolio risk or potential losses. It can change because the index price changes, even without new option positions.
Put/call beside top-trader long share
The options put/call OI ratio is put OI / call OI, using coin-normalized open interest, not volume. Above 1 means more put than call OI; 1 means equal amounts. A zero call denominator makes the ratio unavailable. Puts and calls can each be bought or sold and used in spreads or hedges; the ratio does not identify who initiated a trade.
The top-trader position long share measures long position size divided by long plus short position size among a venue's top-trader population. It is not the percentage of all accounts that are long. Gate's top_lsr_size is a long/short position ratio; the corresponding long share is ratio / (1 + ratio). This site's comparison takes the unweighted mean of Binance and Gate long shares, only in hours both report, rather than weighting by venue OI or account count.
The second chart uses ratio and fraction on one axis: put/call is a unitless ratio that can exceed 1, whereas long share is a fraction from 0 to 1. A long share of 0.5 means 50% of position size is long; it does not mean a put/call ratio of 0.5 is balanced. The text summary expresses long share as a percentage. Line crossings do not indicate agreement or divergence on a common sentiment scale.
These are positioning snapshots of different populations and venue sets. Every outstanding contract has counterparties, and traders may hedge across markets. Neither threshold implies direction or a profitable signal. This comparison is not a forecast.
How hours are matched
The charts cover a rolling 30-day window, hourly. Timestamps are floored to UTC hour starts, then joined by intersection: an hour needs valid whole-chain options notional and put/call, positive perp OI, and top-trader long shares from both venues. Partial options rows, null notional and per-expiry rows are excluded. Both charts use this same set of matched hours.
There is no carry-forward or interpolation. Missing hours break the lines. Matching an hour does not mean the exchanges took their snapshots at the same instant. Coverage counts show valid hours for each input, matched hours and missing hours relative to the window; boundary UTC hours can be partial in time. The latest value is the latest matched observation, not necessarily current positioning. Fewer than 24 matched hours gives a temporarily unavailable data page (503, noindex). Old matched data can remain visible with a stale warning; check its timestamp.
Venue scopes and limits
- Public options venues (options reader public-venue scope): whole-chain public-gated options history only, not the entire global options market. Read the live page's venue labels; Deribit documentation below is a units reference and does not imply inclusion.
- Aggregate tracked USD perp OI (linear and inverse; MEXC excluded): the underlying's aggregate tracked perp OI in USD. It includes eligible inverse (coin-margined) perps as well as linear ones, leaves out venues excluded from combined OI totals such as MEXC, and is not global coverage. This is a broader and different venue population from the options sample, so the ratio compares sizes across different venue sets.
- Binance and Gate top-trader position long share (unweighted venue average): two venue-defined top-trader populations, not every perp trader or the same people as the options holders.
Options notional uses each row's index price, not its option premium or an executable underlying price. The notional helper counts rows without an index as zero, so a missing price does not become measured exposure; partial or null-notional historical observations are rejected by the comparison. Changing coverage, prices or contract expiries can change the ratios. Check venue scope and coverage before comparing periods, and use the accompanying guides for each input's limitations.
Primary API references checked on 17 October 2026: Binance: top-trader position ratio API reference · Gate: contract statistics and top_lsr_size · Bybit: option ticker openInterest and indexPrice · Deribit: book summary fields and units. Not financial advice.