Bitcoin trades sideways: CME open interest declines indicate institutional deleveraging, while leveraged long positions continue to accumulate on Binance and Bitfinex.

During the past month of sideways trading in Bitcoin, underlying market data revealed a significant divergence: CME BTC contract open interest (OI) decreased from approximately $12.5 billion to $10 billion, accompanied by Coinbase's continued negative premium, Bitcoin ETFs recording net outflows in December, and a narrowing basis, indicating that US institutions were deleveraging and closing out at the end of the year. In contrast, Binance BTC open interest remained stable at approximately $11 billion, while Bitfinex's leveraged long positions continued to accumulate to high levels. With the start of the new fiscal year in European and American markets from January 2nd (Friday, the first trading day of the new year) to January 5th (Monday, the first full trading week of the new year) and the formal return of institutions, attention should be paid to the subsequent trend of CME OI (such as whether it stops falling and rebounds) and MSCI's expected announcement on January 15th of the final consultation results regarding whether to remove "Digital Asset Reserve Companies (DATs)" with digital asset holdings exceeding 50% from its global standard indices.