Monday hindsight: last week was a textbook lesson in reading leverage. 📈 Sep 3, a dovish signal from Fed Governor Waller, and BTC goes from ~$77.3K to ~$81.3K. 🔀 Leverage went with it. Coin-denominated open interest rose 8,204 BTC in a day, from ~313,300 to ~321,500, up 2.6%. Dollar open interest hit $26.1B. 📉 The August payrolls print on Sep 4 came in at +162K against ~55K expected. Positioning unwound: coin OI fell to ~306,900 that day, then kept sliding to ~300,500 by Sep 6. 🧭 Net effect: 8,204 BTC of leverage added in a day, 21,042 removed over the next three. Coin OI now sits 4.1% below where it stood before the move, while price is roughly $3K higher than it was on Sep 2. ⚖️ The lesson in hindsight is the sequence, not the direction. A leveraged bet on a policy pivot got taken out by the data, and price held anyway. Leverage moved first. Price kept going without it. 🔗 Explore BTC price and open interest in Sanbase: https://app.santiment.net/charts/btc-coin-oi-32087?utm_source=x&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=btc_leverage_092026&aff=33(Santiment Intelligence)