Bitcoin Traders Pile Into $100K CME Options as Price Climbs Through $93K: CF Benchmarks
2024-11-13

There seems to be no stopping the bitcoin {{BTC}} freight train as traders on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), a go-to-place for institutional players, load up on bets that stand to profit on prices rising into six figures.
Per CF Benchmarks, traders are flocking to the $100,000 call option on the CME, following the lead of their Deribit-based counterparts.
A call option gives the purchaser the right but not the obligation to purchase the underlying asset at a predetermined price on or before a specific date. A call buyer is implicitly bullish on the market.
"Traders appear to be snapping up bitcoin call options at the $100k strike price. Per CF Benchmarks' data, the 30-day constant maturity 25 delta skew has now breached the 5 vol threshold, a near YTD high, which implies that there is much greater demand for upside exposure," Thomas Erdösi, head of product at CF Benchmarks, told CoinDesk in an email.
The 25 delta skew measures the relative richness of call options relative to puts, providing a glimpse of the market sentiment. A positive reading, in this case, the 5 vol (volatility) threshold, indicates that calls are pricier than puts and traders are preparing for a continued price rise. CME's derivatives track CF Benchmarks Bitcoin Reference Rate – New York (BRRNY) variant.
Per CF Benchmarks, calls at strikes above $100,000 are also witnessing a surge in demand, as evident from the elevated implied volatility for these options.
The bullish positioning is consistent with the offshore giant Deribit, where traders have been piling into the $100,000 call option since at least late September.
Bitcoin rose past the $90,000 resistance soon before press time, setting new highs above $92,500 while igoring the continued rise in the dollar index. BTC prices have surged over 36% since pro-crypto Donald Trump's victory in the U.S. presidential election held on Nov. 5.