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Bitcoin’s $BTC$80,733.47 recent staggering price rise has some traders paying millions for upside exposure.
On Monday, one or more traders bought 2,000 bitcoin call-option contracts with an $82,000 strike price expiring on Sept. 4, according to data tracking platform Laevitas. The trade effectively bets that bitcoin’s spot price, currently near $80,000, will rise above $82,000 on or before Sept. 4.
Think of it like buying a lottery ticket – the buyer pays a relatively small upfront amount for the chance of a much larger payout if the bet pays off. In this case, the call buyers spent $2.9 million in premium, the maximum they stand to lose if bitcoin remains below $82,000 through the Sept. 4 expiry.
This bullish options flow comes amid a renewed upswing in Bitcoin. $BTC is currently trading around $80,000, up from roughly $64,000 a week ago, a 25% gain over seven days, according to CoinDesk data.
The rally appears to have been driven by the U.S. Treasury’s bond-buyback announcement, continued inflows into spot Bitcoin ETFs, and short liquidations that likely accelerated the move higher.
Caution persists
Broadly speaking, the multi-billion dollar options market listed on Deribit continues to showcase caution.
That’s evident from a metric called skew, which tracks the spread between volatility premium for calls relative to puts. Negative readings indicate a bias for puts or downside protection.
According to Leavitas, $BTC’s seven-day skew slipped to -5.17% from +2.36%. ETH’s skew fell to -12.15% to +3.41%.
“That reads as downside protection being bid aggressively after a violent rally that has since stalled in the high 70s, with the surface pricing the wall of event risk into the back half of the week rather than a breakdown in the tape,” Laevitas noted Monday. Since then, $BTC has pushed above $80,000, though seven-day skew remains negative, suggesting demand for upside calls still outweighs demand for downside puts despite the fresh highs.
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