Crypto’s favorite leverage machine is cooling off. According to Talos, open interest in perpetual futures has fallen from approximately $81 billion to $67 billion over the past year, a $14 billion decline.
The more interesting part is where some of that money went. Open interest in perpetual contracts linked to real-world assets, such as equities and commodities, has climbed to $9 billion. A year ago it was near zero.
Where the leverage went
Open interest measures how much money sits in those open bets at any given moment.
Talos, which provides institutional trading infrastructure for digital assets, broke down the decline by asset. Bitcoin open interest fell by about $8 billion over the year. Ether dropped by around $5 billion.
Smaller tokens took the biggest combined hit. Their open interest shrank by roughly $10 billion in total.
That $9 billion now makes up roughly 14% of the total open interest Talos tracks.
The data, as of mid-October 2026, was highlighted by Bloomberg around October 15, 2026.
The October hangover
The timing matters. The shift follows the October 10, 2025 deleveraging event, when approximately $19 billion in leveraged positions were wiped out in a single day.
Samar Sen, head of international markets at Talos, noted that while total perpetual open interest remains below where it stood a year ago, the structure of the market has changed dramatically.
Exchanges have noticed the change in appetite and moved to meet it. Hyperliquid has added perpetuals covering indices and commodities. Binance now offers more than 200 TradFi instruments. OKX has built up significant notional exposure in US stocks.
This pivot fits with a pattern that built up through mid-2026. Platforms have been working to fill the space left by fading demand for crypto-native leverage.
What this means for traders and exchanges
The Talos research suggests this diversification could draw in institutional participants who previously stayed away because of crypto’s volatility.
Bitcoin and Ether still anchor the market, even after their respective declines of about $8 billion and around $5 billion. The question is whether RWA contracts keep growing their share beyond 14%, or whether the trend reverses if crypto speculation comes roaring back.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Vivian Nguyen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.