According to TechFlow, on October 16, according to Vetle Lunde, senior analyst at K33 Research, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Bitcoin futures open interest (OI) reached a record 172,430 bitcoins yesterday, setting a new all-time high. Current institutional preferences indicate that they are increasing long positions. With the surge in open interest, futures premiums have also climbed to a 5-month high.

Lunde pointed out that this growth was mainly driven by active market participants rather than capital inflows into futures-based ETFs. Over the past three days, open interest has increased by 19,120 bitcoins, the largest three-day increase since June 2023, with market activity concentrated on contracts expiring in November.