How to know increasing open interest indicates new short contracts or longs contracts?

External question — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: Kia Khoshvaght Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/152405 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. I trade on crypto market and recently I have learned that there is a tool or something named open interest which tells you the amount of long and short open contracts at any time. It is really helpful and shows market strength but is there any way to know these new contracts which open interest tells they are being opened are short or long? I found a way to know that by exchanges funding rate. Funding rate shows that short contracts are being opened and overbought or long ones. But the problem with funding rate is that it is updated each 8 hours. Do you guys know any other tool or tricks for this?

External answer — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: Bob Baerker Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/a/152409 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. When Open Interest increases, new contract(s) have been created. To do so, there must be two counterparties, one buying to open and one selling to open. Therefore, the answer is both.