bearish scenario still holds. The drop in open interest alone does not mean that BTC has reached a price bottom.

Bitcoin's open interest has collapsed by half — but this is not panic.
In past cycles, this indicator declined, after which the flagship cryptocurrency either went sideways or continued to slide lower before a real reversal emerged.

The current value of $20.4 billion is still noticeably higher than the lows of around $10 billion that the market recorded in 2023. This leaves room for further reduction in leverage. "The market has shed more than 45% of peak leverage through the lens of deleveraging" — this is comparable to the scale of the price decline over the same period. Leverage and price have declined at similar rates.