Latest news with #Deribit
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
The '$300K Bitcoin Lottery' Grows Even Bigger as Traders Chase Upside – Time to Step Back?
Earlier this month, CoinDesk highlighted the rising demand for the Deribit-listed $300,000 bitcoin BTC call option, noting it as one of the most popular bullish plays for the all-important June quarter expiry. Now, this bet has become the most popular in the impending quarterly expiry, reinforcing its appeal as a "lottery ticket" for traders anticipating a bitcoin price rally above $300,000 by the end of the next month. At press time, the $300,000 call option was the most popular bet in the June 27 expiry, with a notional open interest of over $600 million, up from $484 million three weeks ago, according to data source Deribit. Notional open interest represents the dollar value of the number of active or open contracts at a given time. On Deribit, one options contract represents one BTC. "The June $300K BTC call options have emerged as the strike with the highest open interest [in June expiry], reflecting aggressive speculative positioning by traders anticipating continued upside," Deribit's Asia Business Development Head Lin Chen told CoinDesk. "The combination of record-breaking volumes and concentrated options bets signals elevated market confidence—and the potential for heightened volatility ahead," Chen added. Deribit's notional options open interest hit a record high of $42.5 billion last week. The momentum is mirrored in the platform's newly launched block RFQ (Request for Quote) system, registering a historic record of nearly $1 billion in daily volume. A call option gives the purchaser the right but not the obligation to buy the underlying asset, BTC, at a predefined price on or before a specific date. A call buyer is implicitly bullish on the market. The $300,000 call expiring on June 27 represents a bet that bitcoin's price will rise three times from the present $110,000 to over $300,000 by the end of the first half. The bet sounds outlandish, as the first half will end in roughly four weeks. But that's been the case lately on Deribit, with traders increasingly targeting upside potential through short-term options. That is evidenced by front-end risk reversals, measuring the demand for calls relative to puts over short-term, being pricier than those with longer maturities. The chart by Amberdata shows risk reversals are positive across the board, indicating a bias for bullish call options. However, short-duration calls are pricer than longer-duration ones. Usually, the opposite is the case. The trend indicates a heightened appetite for quick-paced bullish bets among market participants. "The three-day Bitcoin Conference 2025 is all set to start in Las Vegas today, and so people are speculating on what new bullish announcements will be released at the event," Chen explained. The growing demand for short-duration calls could be a contrarian signal suggesting that speculative excess is often seen near market tops, according to Markus Thielen, founder of 10x Research. Thielen said the options market is flashing a warning, with the seven-day calls trading at a 10% premium to puts. "The options market is flashing a warning: Bitcoin's skew, measuring the difference in implied volatility between puts and calls, has dropped to nearly -10%, indicating calls are pricing in significantly more volatility than puts," Thielen said in a note to clients. "This suggests traders are aggressively chasing upside rather than hedging downside risk. In our experience, such extreme skew levels often reflect peak bullish sentiment, a classic contrarian signal," Thielen added.
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Bitcoin Options Open Interest Hit Record $42.5B on Deribit as Traders Eye Next Bull Target for BTC
"Don't be surprised if buying activity picks up across the spectrum of products tied to BTC," CoinDesk said in Tuesday's edition of the Crypto Daybook Americas, presenting a bullish case for bitcoin. As bitcoin's (BTC) price jumped to new lifetime highs above $111K during Thursday's Asian trading hours it spurred record activity in the Deribit-listed options market. The notional open interest (OI), or the dollar value of the number of active or open options contracts, rose to a record $42.5 billion, Deribit's CEO, Luuk Strijers, told CoinDesk. Options are derivative contracts that give the right but not the obligation to buy or sell the underlying asset at a predetermined price at a later date. A call provides the right to buy, representing an implicit bullish bet on the market, while a put option offers insurance against price slides. BTC's move to record highs saw traders chase upside through higher strike call options. "Most traded strikes in the past 24h: $120K and $130K upside calls for May and June expiry. Highest OI now sits at the $110K, $120K, and $300K June 27 strikes — showing bullish conviction," Strijers said. Deribit is the world's largest crypto options exchange, accounting for nearly 80% of the global crypto options activity. The exchange also offers trading in perpetuals and spot markets. The overall open interest across crypto options and perpetual futures segments has also hit a record high of over $45 billion. Publicly traded crypto exchange Coinbase has planned to acquire derivatives exchange Deribit in a $2.9 billion in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Mint
7 days ago
- Business
- Mint
Bitcoin Price Today: World's largest crypto extends bullish rally to hit record high of $1,11,000 amid US optimism
Bitcoin's outperformance relative to smaller cryptocurrencies is widening. An index that tracks so-called altcoins is down about 40% year-to-date, while Bitcoin is up 18% so far in 2025. A group of 12 US Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have drawn strong inflows, with investors pouring in about $4.2 billion so far in May. In options markets, traders built eye-catching Bitcoin positions earlier this week with the $110,000, $120,000 and $300,000 calls expiring on June 27 logging the most open interest — or number of outstanding contracts — on Deribit, the derivatives exchange. Bitcoin surpassed $111,000 for the first time, with traders increasingly bullish on the prospects of the original cryptocurrency amid mounting institutional demand and support from Donald Trump's administration. Bitcoin climbed as much as 3.3% on Thursday to hit a record of $111,878, and traded just below $111,000 at 6:15 a.m. in New York. Smaller tokens also rose in a broad rally, with second-ranked Ether at one point up about 7.3%. A wave of optimism is buoying Bitcoin after the advancement of a key stablecoin bill in the US senate fueled hopes of greater regulatory clarity for digital-asset firms under President Trump, who is avowedly pro-crypto. Surging demand from Michael Saylor's Strategy — which has stockpiled over $50 billion worth of Bitcoin — and a growing list of token hoarders is another driving force behind the rally. Bitcoin earlier rose to its highest level on record on Wednesday, eclipsing the previous high from January, as risk sentiment continues to improve after last month's tariff-induced selloff. Its ascent was driven by a combination of factors including easing trade tension between the United States and China and Moody's downgrade of U.S. sovereign debt which has prompted investors to seek alternative investment sources to the dollar. Coinbase said on Monday the U.S. Department of Justice has opened a probe into a recent data breach at the company. "We're still in year four of the bitcoin price cycle - the year after the bitcoin halving when miner rewards are slashed in half - which historically means its best days are still ahead of it and - while macro uncertainty and the threat of further volatility remains, a target of $150,000 in 2025 is still very much on the cards," Trenchev said.
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Coinbase hack reveals crypto vulnerability to old-school crime: Bribery
Coinbase Global (COIN) often touts how it is "building the financial system of the future," but last week the cryptocurrency exchange made a disclosure that highlighted how vulnerable it was to a very old-fashioned form of crime: bribery. Cyberattackers accessed names, addresses, government-ID imagery, transaction history, and account balances of customers comprising less than 1% of its monthly transacting users, Coinbase said, and demanded a ransom payment of $20 million. How did criminals get this information? By bribing retail customer service agents in India, according to the company. The data breach disclosure interrupted what should have been a crowning moment for Coinbase as it joined the S&P 500 (^GSPC) following a landmark acquisition of crypto options exchange Deribit for $2.9 billion. Bloomberg reported Monday that the Justice Department is now investigating the hack. Paul Grewal, the company's chief legal officer, told Bloomberg that Coinbase brought the matter to the attention of the DOJ and that the company itself is not being investigated. Coinbase's stock fell 7% on the day of the announcement. It has since recovered and is down roughly 1% from its closing price the day before it revealed the breach. Devin Ryan, head of financial technology research at Citizens Financial Group (CFG), doesn't view the breach as "as some fundamental inherent issue with the company, but more a lapse that they have to now take the consequences of and hopefully learn from." "This is an issue that emanated from employees and also, I think, from a process," Ryan added. As far back as December 26, 2024, the criminals began pilfering the names and addresses of Coinbase customers, according to a Wednesday filing with the Maine Attorney General. Some 69,461 affected people are now at higher risk of identity theft or fraud, according to the filing. The company immediately fired workers who were inappropriately viewing customer data, enhanced fraud protections, and notified customers as far back as December, according to a SEC filing. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong last week posted a video on X addressing the breach, explaining that instead of paying the ransom, Coinbase is establishing a $20 million reward or bounty program for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the attackers. He also said the company has alerted affected customers and is planning to reimburse those affected and relocate some of its support operations. "No, we're not going to pay your ransom," Armstrong said, addressing the attackers during the video. A preliminary estimate of the incident's cost is "approximately $180 million to $400 million," Coinbase said in a SEC filing. Inside the crypto world, there is concern that large account holders could become targets of physical attacks. Reports of attacks generally targeting crypto figures have been surging so far this year. One public database created by Jameson Lopp, co-founder and chief security officer of bitcoin security provider Casa, shows 23 physical attacks against crypto-holding people and companies worldwide so far this year. Though not every physical attack is reported, that figure is nearly three times the number reported in the same period last year. It's also by far the highest number on record since the database began tracking such incidents in December 2014, when bitcoin was much less popular and valuable. Three of this year's attacks have been attempted abductions of crypto executives or their relatives in France, including two where victims lost a finger as their abductors sought both ransom and access to their crypto wallets. Bloomberg has reported that one prominent Coinbase customer has already been fooled into handing over money, citing a Los Angeles artist who told the news outlet he lost $2 million. Coinbase's two biggest rivals — Binance and US-based Kraken — have faced similar "social engineering" attacks, but both fended off data breaches from similar attacks, according to Bloomberg. "Although Coinbase may be world-leading when it comes to giving people access to crypto, I think there are many aspects of their business practice that are likely based on the practices of more traditional organizations,' Evin McMullen, co-founder of AI-powered digital identity project Privado ID, told Yahoo Finance. Armstrong provided more detail about his thoughts on the incident this week as he responded on X to a post from TechCrunch founder and self-proclaimed Coinbase investor Michael Arrington, who claimed the data breach "will lead to people dying." "The data hasn't been dumped on the dark web yet. We will see if that holds," Armstrong said as part of a lengthy response to Arrington on Tuesday. The CEO also expressed doubt that using overseas customer service workers was to blame. "The location of support agents I don't think is a perfect solve to this, since the amounts they were offering were powerful even for people in parts of the U.S. But it's possible it could help on the margin," he added. A Coinbase spokesperson said that, to her knowledge, Armstrong's comments still hold. David Hollerith is a senior reporter for Yahoo Finance covering banking, crypto, and other areas in finance. Click here for in-depth analysis of the latest stock market news and events moving stock prices Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Gulf Insider
7 days ago
- Business
- Gulf Insider
Bitcoin Is Suddenly Surging As It Braces
Bitcoin has rocketed higher, soaring toward its all-time high of almost $110,000 per bitcoin despite BlackRock issuing a serious bitcoin warning last week. Front-run Donald Trump, the White House and Wall Street by subscribing now to Forbes' CryptoAsset & Blockchain Advisor where you can 'uncover blockchain blockbusters poised for 1,000% plus gains!' The bitcoin price has surged more than 30% since hitting Aprils lows of $75,000 per bitcoin, with the bitcoin rally sparking a flood of radical bitcoin price predictions. Now, as a report reveals a Mark Zuckerberg is quietly plotting to blow up the bitcoin and crypto market, options data shows traders are increasingly betting the bitcoin price will climb to $300,000 by June—a level that would give bitcoin a market capitalization of around $6 trillion. Bitcoin call options—bets on where the bitcoin price or other assets will be in the future—expiring at the end of June at the strike price of $300,000 are the second most popular call option on the Deribit exchange behind $110,000, according to data compiled by crypto analytics company Amberdata and seen by Bloomberg . 'If we look at dealer positioning on Deribit for bitcoin, we see dealers being short a lot of gamma $110,000 as traders are buying options for new all-time highs,' Greg Magadini, Amberdata's director of derivatives, told the financial newswire, referring to a gamma squeeze in which the market can suddenly swing. 'This is showing us that the market positioning is heating up in anticipation of new all-time highs and once in uncharted price territory, there's no telling how high bitcoin can go.' Click here to read more Also read: Abraaj Restaurants Becomes First Bitcoin Treasury Company in the Middle East
