Perpetual futures contracts are a type of derivative that allows traders to speculate on the price of digital assets without an expiration date. The Futures Open Interest Crypto Margin Relative Perpetual metric measures the proportion of open perpetual futures contracts that are collateralized with digital assets relative to those collateralized with cash. This metric is useful for understanding the preference of market participants for using digital assets versus cash as collateral, which can provide insights into market confidence and risk tolerance. For example, you might ask, "What is the relative proportion of crypto-margined versus cash-margined open interest for Ethereum perpetual futures?"

This is the Point-in-Time (PiT) variant of Futures Open Interest Crypto Margin Relative Perpetual. PiT metrics are strictly append-only and their history is immutable. The historic data does not necessarily reflect the best current knowledge, but the information at the time when a data point was first computed. PiT metrics are ideal candidates for applications in model backtesting and related quantitative purposes. Read our article on PiT metrics for more information.