It is common for large trading desks to have separate investment vehicles for arbitrage and long-term holdings, and this is not illegal, and is not uncommon even for traditional asset managers and hedge funds.
Therefore, one can use the apparent large volume of bids (known as spoofing) to create fear, uncertainty and doubt while secretly buying these contracts. Essentially, the investor looks like a large seller, when in reality the entity is a net buyer of derivative contracts - the increase in Binance open interest supports this theory.
Another source of conflicting data is on the buy side, with order book analysts observing that entities added over 4,000 BTC worth of buy bids on Bitcoin futures following a breakout of the $64,500 support level.
The data thus paints a picture of large entities of seemingly similar size vying for control, but as investors have been forced to take profits, Bitcoin prices happen to be trending lower as S&P 500 futures indicate a pullback and news flow is biased towards the bearish side with major economic publications highlighting stagnant global growth and tensions in the Middle East.