Bitcoin hits a new all-time high! With the arrival of a new product on Wall Street - the "Bitcoin Spot ETF Option Trading" - the launch day saw a surge in trading volume and investors frantically buying options, indicating strong market confidence in Bitcoin's future outlook, which has driven Bitcoin to briefly break through the $94,000 mark, setting a new record high.
Bitcoin reached a high of $94,040.99 in the early morning of today (20th), and at the time of writing, the gains have moderated somewhat, with Bitcoin trading at $92,203.25, up 1.7% in the past 24 hours.
VX: TTZS6308
Bitcoin Spot ETF Options Debut with Dazzling Performance
The Bitcoin Spot ETF Options provide a more flexible trading tool for the market, allowing investors to buy or sell the underlying asset at a pre-determined price within a set time frame.
Currently, the US market only has the "iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT)" from BlackRock that offers option trading, but it has already attracted an astonishing market demand, delivering an impressive performance on its debut day.
IBIT's option trading volume on the first day reached nearly $1.9 billion, with a total of 354,000 contract trades, of which 289,000 were "call options" and only 65,000 were "put options", a ratio of 4.4 to 1.
It is almost certain that these option trades were the main driving force behind Bitcoin's record-breaking new high.
Increased Market Confidence, Continuous Influx of Institutional Investment
The trading of Bitcoin Spot ETF options will help to enhance market maturity and further boost investor confidence in Bitcoin, attracting more capital into the market.
The efficient leverage and diverse strategies of options can provide investors with more operational flexibility and improve the efficiency of asset allocation, making them particularly attractive to large institutions.
The size of the derivatives market often grows to 10 to 20 times the size of the underlying asset market, and it is expected that the Bitcoin ETF option trading can attract a new wave of institutional investors who face restrictions in accessing the native cryptocurrency option market like Deribit.
The debut of Bitcoin Spot ETF options not only means that the cryptocurrency market structure is becoming more mature, but it is also expected to attract more institutional capital. As for whether Bitcoin can maintain its upward momentum and set new highs, the market is also eagerly awaiting to see.
Where are the Opportunities for Ether?
Looking at the main themes of this bull market, the most obvious one is the MEME coin ecosystem, and the main driver of MEME coins is based on SOL. Other themes are scattered and do not clearly benefit ETH. So it is quite evident that as long as MEME coins remain hot, the demand for SOL will continue to be strong, and its price will naturally rise with the tide.
Of course, in the short term, MEME coins may see some adjustments, as they have already reached a short-term peak, so for those bullish on SOL, it may be better to wait patiently for a pullback to get better value.
At least for now, we don't see many reasons for ETH to rise significantly. The bull market seems to have little to do with it. The future prospect that can be anticipated is the opening of ETH staking ETFs in the US, which, although only offering a 3% yield, can still be quite attractive to large institutions, and as US bond yields decline, ETH staking may become increasingly appealing.
Another scenario where we may see capital flow back into ETH is when investors switch tracks and bet on its catch-up rally, but that would be a later development. As the bull market matures and risks increase, ETH may finally start to shine. This is the underlying logic behind the view that ETH is the "end-of-day battle car" right now.
We can also look at it from another angle - using the previous bull run as an example, a large number of new and old blockchains emerged frequently, and many of those old blockchains no longer had a compelling narrative, with dismal on-chain data and no new ecosystem, even worse off than the current state of Ethereum, yet they still enjoyed the feast of high market liquidity and saw a significant price surge.
So ETH definitely has opportunities, it's just that the timing is not right yet: the main upward wave is most likely to occur in the "mid-to-late stage of the bull market".
