By Jacob Joseph,Oliver Knight

Copyright coindesk

BTC futures open interest across major venues has crept up to $32 billion over the past week.

At the same time, the three-month annualized basis has started compressing again to roughly 6-7% across Binance, OKX and Deribit, leaving the carry trade only marginally profitable.

While the OI growth suggests increasing activity and engagement in the market, the narrowing basis indicates that directional conviction, particularly on the bullish side, is weakening, with traders less willing to pay a high premium for future exposure.

The options data also presents a complex picture of market sentiment.

While the BTC Implied Volatility Term Structure chart shows an upward-sloping curve, suggesting the market expects long-term volatility to be higher than short-term, other metrics point to a more immediate bearish outlook.

Specifically, the 25 delta skew chart indicates that the skew is either flat or slightly negative for shorter-term options (1-week, 1-month), which means traders are paying a premium for puts over calls to gain protection against declines.

This short-term bearish sentiment is directly contradicted by the 24-hour put-call volume chart, which shows a higher volume of calls than puts, indicating that over the past 24 hours most options traders were positioning for a price increase.

Funding rate APRs across major perpetual swap venues have recently started to show some pickup with BTC annualized funding currently at 17%.

If the uptrend is maintained and followed by other venues, funding rates would suggest growing conviction in a directional, more bullish bet on prices.