Open Interest Tracker Screensaver
The Open Interest Tracker screensaver ranks futures open interest across major crypto pairs on a live board — real outstanding leveraged positions — drawn key-less from Binance's public market data API. It's free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.
Live preview
Press ESC to leave fullscreen. Settings are saved in your browser only.
How the Open Interest Tracker screensaver works
The saver fetches real current open interest for major futures pairs from Binance's public API, with no key required.
Pairs rank by real total open interest, sized in the underlying asset and in dollar terms.
The board eases smoothly as real positioning shifts on refresh.
Readings refresh on a schedule to track real market activity.
Reading open interest on perpetual futures
Open interest is the total number of derivative contracts that are outstanding, meaning they have been entered into and not yet closed out or settled. Exchanges such as CME count only one side of each contract, so a trade between one buyer and one seller adds one to open interest, not two. Volume is different: it counts every contract traded, so a position opened and then closed raises volume but leaves open interest unchanged.
Most crypto futures are perpetual contracts, which have no set settlement date and can be held indefinitely. Funding payments, paid on a regular basis, push the contract price toward the price of the underlying asset. Crypto perpetuals often allow high leverage, sometimes above 100 times the margin. On Binance, a futures position becomes liquidatable when its collateral falls below the maintenance margin, and it is then closed automatically.
Because every long has a matching short, open interest says how much exposure exists, not which side will win. Binance's public open-interest endpoint returns a symbol, a figure and a timestamp, so the board is a snapshot of positioning at one venue, not the whole market. Different exchanges may also quote the figure in contracts, in coins or in a dollar equivalent.
A worked example
A real climb in open interest alongside a rising price often signals fresh money entering — while a climb alongside a falling price can flag rising leverage risk.
Settings & tips
- Accent recolours the bars.
- Open interest measures outstanding contracts, not trading volume.
- Sudden real drops often follow a wave of liquidations.
Frequently asked questions
- What is open interest?
- The real total number of outstanding futures contracts that haven't yet been closed — a measure of how much leverage is active in the market.
- Is a key needed?
- No. Binance's public market data API is free and key-less.
- Is this the whole market?
- It reflects Binance's own real futures market, one of the largest, not every exchange combined.
- Is it free?
- Yes — free, no download, in your browser.
- How is open interest different from volume?
- Volume counts every contract traded over a period, while open interest counts contracts still outstanding. A position opened and closed in the same day raises volume without changing open interest.
- Does high open interest mean the price will go up?
- No. Each outstanding contract has a buyer and a seller, so the number shows how much exposure exists, not which side will win.
- What is a liquidation?
- The automatic closing of a futures position when its collateral falls below the maintenance margin. On Binance this is checked against the mark price.