(Bloomberg) — The options market is showing that crypto traders are targeting what would be a new record price for Bitcoin after the largest cryptocurrency reached a more than two-year high of $50,000 this week.
Most Read from Bloomberg
The open interest, or number of outstanding contracts, for calls that expire on March 29 with strike prices of $60,000, $65,000 and $75,000 has seen a significant increase, according to data from the largest crypto options exchange Deribit. Bitcoin’s all-time price of almost $69,000 was set in November 2021.
The demand for the call options comes even after Bitcoin snapped its longest winning streak in a year following the breach of $50,000 on Monday. Traders attributed the pullback on Tuesday to speculators taking a brief respite after seven days of consecutive gains.
“The options market at large is currently positioning for continued momentum in the coming months,” Vetle Lunde, senior analyst at K33 Research. “In the last week, flows have largely been directed towards bullish price action with a lot of activity in far out of the money calls.”
While the call options with the strike price of $50,000 still has the most open interest by the end of March, out of the money calls trade at substantial premiums to puts, Lunde said.
The call options give purchaser of the contracts the right to buy their underlying assets at a fixed price within a set period of time.
“The strikes traded across the 75-100K region may be more of a bet on this remarking of longer-dated implied volatility than a pure bet on direction, but of course being calls, these profit on an increase in both,” said Chris Newhouse, a DeFi analyst at Cumberland Labs.
Potential rate cuts as well as the halving have been among the main driving forces that could push the Bitcoin prices higher.
“There’s certainly a noticeable amount of speculation occurring in the options markets, as funding rates across perpetual exchanges shows no sign of excessive short interest that might be hedged through the purchase of calls, so one can reasonably assume the outright call demand is a bet on direction and volatility,” Newhouse said.
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.