The Bitcoin spot ETF (IBIT) of BlackRock has started trading its options on Nasdaq last night, creating a new way for Wall Street investors to trade and bet on the price of Bitcoin. Nasdaq told the media that IBIT traded 73,000 option contracts in the first 60 minutes of trading on Tuesday, making it one of the top 20 most active "non-index options" of the day.
At the same time, Bitcoin also broke through its previous high last night, according to OKX trading data, Bitcoin reached a new all-time high of $93,888 last night.
James Seyffart, an ETF analyst at Bloomberg, said on social media:
"According to statistics, the total notional open interest of $IBIT (iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF) options on the first day was close to $1.9 billion, with a total of 354,000 contracts traded. Of these, 289,000 were call options and 65,000 were put options, with a call-to-put ratio as high as 4.4:1. These option trades can almost certainly be considered one of the important factors behind Bitcoin's new all-time high today."
How will the launch of option products affect Bitcoin?
Noelle Acheson, an economist and columnist of "Crypto is Macro Now", said that Bitcoin has an active derivatives market, but in the US, its scale is still small compared to other asset classes, and it is largely limited to institutional participants, but with the launch of new products, investors will have more diversified investment and trading strategies, and Bitcoin will also benefit from it:
"A deeper onshore derivatives market will increase the growing complexity of the market. This will enhance investor confidence in the asset, bring in new groups, and enable more diversified investment and trading strategies... All else being equal, this should dampen volatility and downside risk."
On the other hand, Todd Sohn, an ETF strategist at Strategas, also said that the launch of Bitcoin ETF options could also spawn new funds that include these options.
"Grayscale has already filed for a 'covered call fund', and I believe BlackRock will also file. Then we'll get a buffer (to market volatility), and then we'll get any other trend-following strategies that people can think of. I think the ecosystem will really start to take off from here."
(This article is reprinted with permission from GT Radar)
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