OI vs past expiries

Why compare OI across Friday cycles

Deribit's main weekly expiry is Friday 08:00 UTC. A single snapshot only shows where writers sit right now. Overlaying several completed Fridays — aligned by moneyness, not raw strike — shows whether the current week's positioning is typical or skewed, even when BTC moved $10k between cycles.

Reading this chart

A peak near 1.00 on every line means OI keeps concentrating at-the-money regardless of regime. One cycle with its peak at 0.92 or 1.08 suggests writers were positioned for a directional move that week. Taller recent lines mean more total contracts open going into expiry than older weeks — a rough read on how much hedging flow the asset is pulling.

• Peak at 1.00 across cycles — normal ATM concentration.
• Peak shifted off-center in one cycle — directional positioning that week.
• Taller lines recently — more aggregate OI than the asset's own recent baseline.

Methodology

Each cycle uses the last chain_snapshots row before 08:00 UTC on that Friday. Recent archive rows cover all expiries; older rows (before mid-August 2026) are ≤8-day slices only — cycles from that era reflect near-dated positioning, not the full term structure. Strikes outside 70–150% moneyness are dropped (same clip as the IV surface pages). See also the expiry countdown for the next cut.