COIN ML

Margin loans of the coin on Binance spot.

What it is. The exchange lends the coin against collateral. A coin is usually borrowed to be sold: that is a short on spot. If price falls, the coin is bought back cheaper and the loan is repaid. A stablecoin is borrowed to buy a coin: that is a long on credit, and ML STABLECOIN shows it.

An example. A trader expects BTC to fall. He has $100,000 in USDT and no bitcoin. He posts the USDT as collateral and borrows 1 BTC from the exchange at 84,000.

1. Borrowed 1 BTC. In COIN ML: Borrowed +1, Hands +1, Delta +1 for this bar. Available is 1 BTC lower. Nothing in COIN TRADES yet: a loan is not a trade.
2. Sold that 1 BTC on spot for $84,000. COIN TRADES shows a sell of $84,000. Nothing changes in COIN ML: the debt is the same.
3. Price fell to 80,000. He buys 1 BTC for $80,000 — a buy in COIN TRADES — and returns it to the exchange. In COIN ML: Repaid +1, Hands 1 lower, Delta −1 for this bar. The $4,000 difference minus interest is his profit.
4. Other outcome: price rose to 90,000. He still has to return 1 BTC, so he buys at $90,000 — the same buy in TRADES, the same Repaid and the same Delta −1 in COIN ML, only the buy is forced and at a loss.

One trader — 1 BTC. On the chart — thousands like him. Hands USDT +$5M — over the last 24 hours $5M more was borrowed than repaid: the coin is being sold on credit. Hands −$5M — $5M more was repaid: the coin is being bought back. How much was borrowed and repaid in this particular bar — Delta USDT. After 24 hours our trader's loan leaves the window: Borrowed and Hands drop by 1 BTC on their own, but Delta will not show that — it counts only real borrowing and repayments.

Where the numbers come from. For each coin the exchange publishes three numbers: how much was borrowed and how much repaid over the last 24 hours, and how much more can be borrowed. The window is rolling, the exchange recalculates it every 5 minutes, there is no reset at midnight. The platform takes the numbers every minute, and a bar on the chart is the average of the minute snapshots. Delta is calculated differently: from the rolling sums it reconstructs how much was actually borrowed and repaid within the bar.

• One histogram line. Default — Hands USDT: borrowed minus repaid, in dollars.
• A bar up — more was borrowed than repaid: debt grows, the coin is being sold on credit. Down — more was repaid: debt is being paid off, the coin is being bought back.
• A stablecoin is borrowed the other way round — to buy. The same line on COIN ML and ML STABLECOIN means opposite actions.

See the spot short that futures indicators do not show: the coin is borrowed to be sold. And see when that short gets closed — and it can only be closed by buying.

For example.

• Hands USDT stays positive for several hours while price falls. The coin is being borrowed and sold — the spot short grows along with the move.
• Hands is positive, but price rises. They sell on credit against the move — the debt goes underwater on price. It can only be repaid by buying the coin back higher.
• Hands is negative, Cumulative Delta turned down. Debt is being paid off: the coin is being bought back. These are buys with a deadline and a reason — to repay the loan.
• Available near zero. Nothing left to borrow: there will be no new spot shorts until someone returns the coin.

Metric — twelve fields, in three groups of four.

1. What there is.

• Borrowed / Borrowed USDT — how much of the coin was borrowed over the last 24 hours. In coins or in dollars.
• Repaid / Repaid USDT — how much was repaid over the same 24 hours.
• Available — how much more can be borrowed: the exchange's free pool, in coins. When the pool runs out, there will be no new loans until someone repays.
• Loan Coefficient = Hands ÷ Borrowed: what share of the loans is still outstanding, from −1 to +1. 0.3 — 70% of the borrowed amount was repaid. −0.36 — 36% more was repaid than borrowed.

2. The difference.

• Hands Amount / Hands USDT = Borrowed − Repaid: borrowed minus repaid over the last 24 hours. Plus — debt grew over the day. Minus — it was being paid off over the day. This is not the outstanding debt but the net over the window. This is the main field, it is the default.

3. Movement over time.

• Delta / Delta USDT — net loan flow per bar: how much was actually borrowed minus how much was actually repaid. Unlike Hands, old loans leaving the 24-hour window do not get in here. Plus — more was borrowed than repaid in the bar. Minus — more was repaid. The exchange updates the sums every 5 minutes, so on 1m four bars out of five will be zero.
• Cumulative Delta / Cumulative Delta USDT — cumulative net flow: the sum of Delta. The line rises — debt is piling up. Falls — it is being paid off. Look at the slope, not the level: the starting point is the start of the data, the level itself means nothing. With the new formula there is history for the last 90 days; before that the line was calculated with the old formula and drifted, do not draw conclusions from it.

In coins or in dollars. With the USDT tag — at the price at the time of the snapshot, so when price rises the dollar line rises by itself. In coins, price does not interfere: you see the loans themselves. Compare coins with each other in dollars, read a single coin in coins.

CD Mode — only for Cumulative Delta. There are several minute values inside a bar: Close — at the end of the bar, Open — at the start, High and Low — the extremes, Average — the mean.

Example on BTC, 23.09. Over the last 24 hours Borrowed 745 BTC, Repaid 758 → Hands −12.6 BTC, that is −$1.1M, Loan Coefficient −0.017: over the day slightly more was repaid than borrowed. In USDT at the same hour: Borrowed $840M, Repaid $1.14B → Hands −$299M, coefficient −0.36: the dollar debt was being paid off over the day.

The takeaway from these two lines. The BTC short on credit barely changes — minus 12 BTC against 745 borrowed is noise. But the credit long is being unwound noticeably: $299M more was repaid than borrowed, a third of the borrowed amount. To repay dollars, coins are usually sold — so part of the spot selling was driven not by choice but by debt. The same negative number on COIN ML and on ML STABLECOIN means different things: for the coin — buying back, for the stablecoin — selling.