The entire crypto market has seen a steady increase in open interest (OI) over the last few months. But the Shiba Inu open interest seems to not have followed this trend as much as others. While there has been a huge jump in the open interest of the largest cryptocurrencies in the industry, Shiba Inu’s rise has remained relatively muted, with implications for the altcoin’s price.
Shiba Inu Open Interest Trajectory
The Shiba Inu open interest initially started pumping back in August when the current bull run began. However, in the following months, the open interest has been considerably lower, happening at a time when open interest across other top cryptocurrencies is seeing large spikes.
Shiba Inu’s open interest crossed $43 million back in August but has had a hard time returning to this level, data from Coinglass shows. The open interest has since dropped and continues to range just below the $20 million level. Now, while this is not out of character for the altcoin, it is a deviation when it comes to following Bitcoin’s trends.
Dogecoin, SHIB’s foremost competitor, has followed the trajectory of Bitcoin, with the open interest staying low through the months of October and then exploding in the month of November. To put this in perspective, the Dogecoin open interest dropped as low as $226 million in October before exploding as high as $520 million in November.
However, the Shiba Inu open interest has struggled, maintaining a low peak of $17 million in November with a small rise to $18 million in December. This is in stark contrast to the open interest of Bitcoin and Dogecoin which have seen a flurry of activities as prices have recovered.
SHIB price shows more volatility | Source: SHIBUSD on Tradingview.com
SHIB OI Deviates From Price
Another way that Shiba Inu has deviated from the rest of the crypto market is the fact that the price does not move directly proportional to the open interest. While the likes of Bitcoin and Dogecoin have shown prices moving upward as open interest has soared, SHIB’s price has remained fairly high while the open interest has remained fairly low.
This suggests that a rise in open interest is not actually one of the major factors pushing the SHIB price. So unlike others, a crash in open interest will likely not translate into a crash in price. However, Shiba Inu continues to trail the Bitcoin recovery closely, so a decline in the BTC price could sorely affect the SHIB price.