Cryptocurrency derivatives markets have been seeing significant demand, as daily volumes for bitcoin options crossed $1 billion on December 17, 2020. Most of the record turnover has been taking place on the derivatives platform Deribit, and a large $100k strike has been introduced on the exchange for September 2021.
While bitcoin (BTC) spot markets touched an all-time high (ATH) this year at $23,777 per coin, derivatives markets have been seeing lots of action as well. On Thursday, December 17, 2020, researchers from skew.com tweeted about the record BTC options volumes crossing $1 billion for the first time.
The aggregate total of $1 billion in bitcoin options daily volume stemmed from exchanges like Deribit, Okex, Bit.com, CME Group, Ledgerx, Huobi, and Bakkt.
“Bitcoin options first $1bln day,” Skew tweeted on Thursday. Skew’s chart shows that Deribit leads the record turnover, followed by the derivatives markets on Bit.com and Okex respectively.
Deribit’s market update sent to news.Bitcoin.com shows that open interest has also seen an all-time high. Thursday’s BTC options on Deribit clocked in at over 223,000 BTC or $5 billion. At the same time, there was $291 million in BTC futures, $228 million in perpetual swaps as well.
“We have seen a total turnover of USD 3.5 billion today (rolling 24 hrs),” Deribit said on Thursday. “We have seen a total turnover of USD 1.4 billion today (rolling 24 hrs).
Deribit also added:
[The exchange] gets a lot of demand for higher strikes and has just introduced a USD 100k strike for September ’21.
This means that derivatives traders leveraging Deribit can bet on BTC reaching $100k using the options contract. Deribit has said some trades have been executed since launching the contract on Thursday and the call and put options have an expiry date of September 24, 2021.
A number of contracts are also expiring on Christmas day, as Deribit says “80k contracts or USD 1.85 billion monster expiry” is set to happen.
At the same time as the heated derivatives market action, skew.com also tweeted about the spot market action that took place on Thursday. “Record spot session yesterday, $3bln+ BTCUSD traded across largest fiat-crypto exchanges,” Skew tweeted.
The market researchers also showed a chart on Friday that indicated an 88% probability that BTC prices will be over $20k by the year-end.
What do you think about all the derivatives markets action and the $1 billion in daily bitcoin options on Thursday? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.
Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, Skew.com,
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