Long/short ratio (crypto derivatives)

What is counted

In a derivatives market, every open contract has a long holder and a short holder, so total long and total short contracts are always equal. A ratio of 'more longs than shorts' can therefore only mean that more accounts are long than short. Binance's global account ratio returns, per period, the long account share, the short account share and their ratio for all traders on a USDⓈ-M symbol. If 60% of accounts are net long and 40% net short, the ratio is 1.5, which also means the 40% short accounts hold, on average, larger positions than the long accounts.

Binance's documentation lists periods from 5 minutes to 1 day and states that only the latest 30 days of data are available.

How traders read it

• A high account ratio says that many smaller accounts are long while fewer, larger accounts take the other side.
• Extreme readings are often read as crowding, but crowding can persist.
• Exchanges may publish separate ratios for their largest traders, by accounts and by positions, which can point the other way.
• The ratio is venue specific: one exchange's accounts are not the market.

Limits

• It says nothing about size or leverage, only about the count of accounts on each side.
• Short history limits backtests of any rule built on it.
• Accounts on one venue can be hedged elsewhere, so a long on a perpetual may be one leg of a neutral position.
• It is an aggregate published at the end of each period, not a live order flow signal.

In Senzoukria

The desktop does not fetch or display long/short ratios. Its crypto analysis rests on each venue's public trades and order book: who crossed the spread, at what price and size, and what liquidity rests or is pulled, on Binance Spot, Binance USD-M perpetuals and Bybit linear perpetuals. Those show aggression as it happens rather than a periodic census of accounts.