Bitcoin Derivatives Action Swells: A Few June Futures Trade for $30K, Deribit Adds $140K Options Strike

Bitcoin derivatives markets have been seeing significant demand in recent months at the same time bitcoin spot markets climbed to all-time price highs and surged 149% during the last three months. Just recently the leading bitcoin options exchange Deribit announced the launch of both $120k and $140k strikes, and data from skew.com shows some June futures are swapping for $30k.

Crypto derivatives have been hot in 2020, as demand has skyrocketed on various trading platforms this year. At the end of November, CME Group outpaced the competition and became the world’s largest bitcoin futures provider that month.

In mid-December, news.Bitcoin.com reported on the leading bitcoin options exchange Deribit’s massive volume. Bitcoin daily options volume crossed $1 billion and Deribit introduced a $100k options strike for September.

Then on December 26, 2020, Deribit tweeted about adding two more large options strikes. “We’ve added the BTC 120K strike. We expect to add 140K tomorrow,” Deribit said. “Our introduction policy is adding strikes up to delta 10,” the exchange added. Following that tweet, Deribit announced the $140k strike addition. “That was quick,” Deribit announced. “We just added the BTC $140K strike.”

In fact, bitcoin options trading swelled in growth during the last twelve months. “Bitcoin options grew quickly this year with total open interest set to exceed $10bln in 2021,” the derivatives markets analytics provider skew.com recently tweeted.

Data from skew.com shows that Deribit commands most of the aggregate BTC options open interest. This is followed by open interest from exchanges like Okex, Bybit, CME Group, and Ledgerx respectively.

As far as bitcoin futures aggregated daily volumes are concerned, Binance and Huobi command the top volumes today. These top two futures exchange platforms are followed by the derivatives exchanges Bybit, Bitflyer, Okex, Bitmex, and FTX.

Meanwhile, bitcoin (BTC) spot prices have been extremely volatile on Sunday skyrocketing to $27,800 during the early afternoon trading sessions (EST) and dipping down to the $26,521 range during the day as well.

Moreover, skew.com tweeted that there are some futures looking at the $30,000 zone already. “Some June futures [are] already trading > $30k,” the researchers tweeted.