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Traders on the biggest Bitcoin options exchange are pricing in a 7% chance for BTC to hit ATHs before 2021 Traders on the biggest Bitcoin options exchange are pricing in a 7% chance for BTC to hit ATHs before 2021
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Traders on the biggest Bitcoin options exchange are pricing in a 7% chance for BTC to hit ATHs before 2021

with insights from Deribit
Traders on the biggest Bitcoin options exchange are pricing in a 7% chance for BTC to hit ATHs before 2021

Cover art/illustration via CryptoSlate. Image includes combined content which may include AI-generated content.

Bitcoin options have turned out an unlikely choice of trading instrument in 2019-20. A feature of traditional markets, BTC options were a path towards the broader institutionalization of cryptocurrencies, specifically the trading side.

Deribit, a Panama-based crypto derivatives platform founded in 2014, released a projection yesterday that pegged the chances of Bitcoin reaching its ATH of $20,000 this year.

Bitcoin to $30,000? 4% chance

As per a tweet, Deribit traders were seemingly pricing โ€œimplied probabilityโ€ of a Bitcoin option hitting certain values this year. The result? A 7.6 percent chance of Bitcoin hitting its all-time high of $20,000 in December 2020.

The graph calculates various probabilities for Bitcoin, presumably using open interest, volume, and other option-centric-data available to Deribit. Traders are fairly short-term bullish on Bitcoin.

80 percent of implied probability shows Bitcoin will trade above $8,500 in June. A 30 percent chance Bitcoin goes over $10,000 in September and a 12 percent chance of going over $15,000 in December.

Bitcoin hitting $30,000, a previously unseen figure, has a zero percent chance of doing so in June, but a seemingly 4 percent chance of doing so in December, if the below graph is approximately mapped out.

Implied Probability of Expiring Over Sx
(Source: Deribit)

However, options data may not be an accurate metric of Bitcoinโ€™s future price movements. The pioneer cryptocurrency tends to move very sharply, dropping hundreds or thousands in dollars over minutes at times.

Implied probabilityย 

For the uninitiated, options give a holder the right to buy/sell, in this case, a Bitcoin, at a predetermined price on a certain date.

If the holder of an option is correct, they usually get a payout a high multiple of the actual price movement, courtesy the large leverage on such products.

The more grandiose predictions stand to gain higher. For example, a hypothetical option of Bitcoin going to zero within June 2020 will be low on initial premium, but very high on payment. But a more short term, obvious prediction, such as Bitcoin hitting $9,800 by June 12, will not gain as much and cost higher in premium.

Options activity has exploded on Deribit in recent times. The exchange recorded $120 million in BTC options on Tuesday, twice those of option volumes at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). Data on on-chain analytics firm Skew showed:

BTC Options Volumes
(Source: Skew)

โ€œOpen interestโ€ is a staggering $1.2 billion on Deribit, representing the value of outstanding, unsettled contracts on the exchange at the time of writing.

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