Privacy Coin Perpetual Futures Open Interest Crosses $300M for First Time Since January

Open Interest Tops $300M

Leveraged speculation on Monero (XMR) has swollen to its largest scale since the start of 2026. Notional open interest on Monero perpetual futures, the dollar value of every position still open on the market, broke above $300 million and is closing in on January's record of $320 million. Measured in coins rather than dollars, open interest reached 515,730 XMR, a five-week high and the heaviest coin-count reading since mid-September, up almost 30% from roughly 400,000 XMR a week earlier. The buildup has tracked price: Monero pushed above $600 for the first time since January, and the second-largest privacy coin still trades near $613 after a pullback that left it down about 5.4% over the past 24 hours. Anonymous analyst Doctor Profit, who called Bitcoin's 2025 cycle top and rotated out of risk in July, framed the January parallel in a post on X: “The last time this open interest level was reached was January 2026. Monero then fell 66% over the following 20 days. I smell a big XMR liquidation.” His warning carries weight because of that record, and because the mechanism behind it is visible in the current data. Dollar-denominated totals like the one SoSoValue tracks let traders compare leverage across assets directly: the higher the open interest, the more margin trading exposure sits waiting to be settled, and the larger the chain reaction a single reversal can set off. At $300 million, Monero's book now stands within about 6% of the level that preceded the year's steepest drawdown.

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January's 66% Collapse Playbook

January supplies the closest comparison the record offers. Open interest set its high while price ran to about $790; within 20 days Monero had fallen below $300, a 66% drawdown, and data from Coinglass recorded millions of dollars in forced long liquidations along the way. Traders shorthand the sequence: longs crowd in, one pullback triggers concentrated liquidations, and the selling feeds on itself until price lands far from the top. The same three ingredients are visible now. Open interest and price are rising together, the long side of positioning is the heavier one, and the roughly 30% weekly jump in coin-denominated interest points to new entrants adding size rather than old positions closing. Two readings of the same number sharpen the risk. In dollar terms, a $300 million book means each 5% swing moves a meaningful block of leveraged exposure into stress, which is why liquidation heatmaps have become the monitoring tool of choice. In coin terms, the climb from about 400,000 XMR to 515,730 XMR in a single week shows demand arriving as leverage builds. The rally has its own fuel. Monero's network recovered after the Qubic chain disrupted it earlier in October, an episode that concentrated attention on privacy coins, and broader risk appetite has improved: Bitcoin returned to $83,000 and money moved into smaller-capitalization names, a pattern consistent with the privacy coin rotation we tracked earlier this week. A 24-hour trading volume of roughly $242 million, per our live tracking, gives the market enough liquidity to move fast in either direction. The cost of heavy open interest is volatility. If Monero loses the $580 support line our Monero technical analysis board tracks, chained long liquidations could drag the price back toward the $500 range, retracing a version of January's slide.

The derivatives readings behind the headline figure point to crowding without, so far, the stress marks of a top. Our perp funding rate for XMR sits at 0.0069%, mildly positive, so longs are paying shorts to keep their side on, the signature of a crowded book rather than panic. Momentum has cooled even so: our composite reads an RSI of 38.3 and a bearish MACD signal against a broader downtrend. The picture changes if funding flips negative or open interest unwinds while price holds, both signs that leverage is leaving by choice. That is the scenario behind his earlier $287 million warning, and the distance from $287 million to $300 million shows how quickly the exposure has grown since.