Dogecoin (DOGE) has formed an atypical pattern that has analysts looking twice. Despite the meme coin’s price cooling from the highs, futures activity for the asset is heating up significantly, according to a recent update from blockchain analytics company Glassnode.

More dramatically, the sum of money invested in DOGE futures contracts, a metric commonly called Open Interest, has risen by almost 64% in just the last week. Open Interest climbed from $989 million to $1.62 billion, indicating strong speculation as price endured some downside.

Strong Engagement Suggests Traders are Optimistic to Keep Buying

This type of split between price action and futures activity is what’s called a decoupling. It’s another way of saying that even though the spot price of Dogecoin has pulled back, traders interested in betting on the coin’s future movements are piling in quicker and quicker.

That’s simply an indication that a large number of traders remain very active — either betting on a return to higher prices or simply speculating on short-term moves.

Glassnode refers to such a setup as one that shows “persistent speculative positioning”, that is, people with positions that can only prosper in a future price change are taking large positions even if the momentum at the current moment lags.

The chart that has been published by Glassnode further describes this point. It demonstrates the two important tendencies in the last three months: DOGE’s price (black) and the Open Interest (gold). From the middle of February to early May, Dogecoin’s price also exhibited several fluctuations where it had risen and fallen several times, with a clear pullback from a recent high.

Source: X @Glassnode

In the meantime, Open Interest which had been relatively stable with some sort of slumps, continued to rise sharply in early May. It reached its highest point in mid-May of this year, exceeding $1.6 billion.

The other thing that makes this development quite remarkable is the fact that Open Interest was skyrocketing even after DOGE’s price stopped increasing as rapidly, implying that trading on the coin is still extremely active, and traders may be anticipating a rally or heavily protecting against a fall – or both.

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