Dogecoin Speculation Falls Back to October 2025 Levels as DOGE Drops 70%

Dogecoin traders are once again taking on significant leveraged exposure, with futures positioning returning to levels last recorded in October 2025, when DOGE was trading at nearly three times its current price.

Despite Dogecoin hovering around $0.07, traders are putting more capital behind leveraged futures bets. This has created a growing disconnect between the token’s weak price performance and increasing risk-taking in the derivatives market.

Open interest, which measures the value of outstanding futures contracts, has risen to approximately $1.21 billion from around $930 million in late June, according to CoinGlass. DOGE has fallen nearly 3% over the past 24 hours and is down about 70% over the past year.

The extent of the speculative activity becomes even clearer when open interest is measured in DOGE rather than dollars.

Futures open interest has climbed to roughly 17.18 billion DOGE, close to the 17.78 billion recorded in October 2025. At that time, DOGE traded near $0.25, compared with about $0.07 today. In other words, speculative positioning has almost returned to its previous level in coin terms, even though the value of each token is now less than one-third of what it was.

Futures allow traders to use leverage and control positions larger than what their available capital would normally permit. Rising open interest indicates that additional leveraged positions are entering the market, although the figure alone does not reveal whether traders are bullish or bearish.

Trading-account data provides a clearer picture of market sentiment. On Binance, more than three accounts held long DOGE positions for every account betting on a decline. The long-to-short ratio on OKX was even higher, exceeding five to one.

These ratios do not mean that three times as much money is positioned for a DOGE rally because every futures trade has both a buyer and a seller. However, they show that a larger number of traders are taking bullish positions even as DOGE continues to weaken.

That crowded positioning could become a source of downside pressure if DOGE falls further. Leveraged positions are automatically liquidated when traders no longer have enough collateral to support them, forcing those positions to be closed. A wave of liquidations can add further selling pressure to an already declining market.

DOGE was trading near $0.07 during Thursday’s Asian morning session, down about 3%, making it one of the few major cryptocurrencies to decline while the broader market edged higher.