Amr Taha2026-11-03

Ethereum OI Drops $3.11B Across Four Exchanges as Tether Burns $4B USDT

Ethereum's open interest fell 3.11 billion, or 35.8%, across Binance, Gate, Bybit and HTX between September 21 and November 2, while ETH declined roughly 18%. The contraction was far from uniform. Gate's ETH open interest plunged 51.6%, from 3.43 billion to 1.66 billion, versus a 16.4% decline on Binance, from 3.42 billion to 2.86 billion. Both started near 3.4 billion, but Gate's 1.77 billion drop was 3.2 times Binance's 560 million decline. Gate's latest reading was also 40% below its April 2025 level of 2.76 billion. HTX recorded the sharpest proportional fall, down 87.5% from 543 million to 68 million, its lowest reading shown since October 2024. Bybit declined 23.5%, from 1.3 billion to 995 million. Gate and HTX together accounted for 72.2% of the four-exchange dollar decline. Alongside the derivatives contraction, Tether burned 4 billion in USDT on Ethereum on November 2, its largest burn since the $5 billion operation on July 7. The historical comparison is notable: following July's burn, Bitcoin subsequently rallied roughly 35%, while Ethereum surged 57%. The latest burn may reflect actual USDT redemptions, potentially reducing circulating liquidity, or treasury operations such as cross-chain rebalancing, which would not necessarily represent a net liquidity withdrawal.