The trading volume on bitcoin options listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) has surged this Wednesday, October 7, as traders mostly traded call options, bets on a BTC price rise.
According to data from Skew, first reported on by CoinDesk, the CME traded $48 million worth f options on Wednesday, the highest daily volume it has seen since July 28. The figure is up 300% from Tuesday, where it traded $12 million worth of bitcoin options.
Options are derivatives based on the value of their underlying security. An options contract offers the buyer the opportunity to buy or sell the underlying asset, but not contract buyer isn’t required to buy or sell the security. Call options allow the holder to buy the asset, while put options allow them to sell at a specific price within a specific timeframe.
Bitcoin options trading volumes surged as traders took $14,000 and $16,000 strike prices and $18,000 and $20,000 strike prices, for December 2020 and March 2021 expiry contracts.
This means that traders likely bought call options at a $14,000 strike price expiring in December, and sold calls expiring in December at $16,000. They also bought calls expiring in March 2021 at $18,000 and sold calls expiring then at $20,000.
CoinDesk reports these could be bullish structures, known as bull call spreads, which show traders are expecting BTC to move up in the near term. Taking strike prices into account, traders see the price of bitcoin move up to $16,000 by the end of the year, but expect the price of the flagship cryptocurrency to remain below $20,000 until the end of Q1 2021.
Bitcoin is currently trading at $10,920. The cryptocurrency’s price went up after Jack Dorsey’s fintech firm Square revealed it invested $50 million in bitcoin.
Featured image via Unsplash.
