Bitcoin listed on Deribit The options market reveals growing caution from traders, with some bracing for a drop to $80,000 as spot prices show signs of weakness.
Notional open interest on BTC options, or the dollar value of active contracts, remains elevated above $40 billion on Deribit, with activity concentrated in November and December reaching nearly $110,000. However, at the same time, demand for the $80,000 strike has increased, a sign that traders expect a continued selloff in BTC.
“A notable increase in put options positioned near the $80,000 mark indicates that traders are increasingly hedging against a deeper decline,” Deribit said. Deribit, the world’s largest crypto options exchange, accounts for over 80% of the global options business.
Options are widely used to hedge exposure to the spot/futures market and to speculate on price direction, volatility and time. A put option gives the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to sell the underlying asset at a predetermined price on or before a specified future date. A put represents insurance against price declines, while a call represents a bullish bet.
The $80,000 put is a bet that the spot price will drop below this level by the option’s expiration date.
At the time of writing, the $80,000 put on Deribit has an open interest (OI) of over $1 billion, while the $90,000 put stands at almost $1.9 billion, almost matching the combined open interest of the popular $120,000 and $140,000 calls.
Note that at least some of the OI in these higher strike calls comes from crushing or shorting against long spot bets, rather than outright bullish bets. BTC holders sell higher strike calls to generate additional yield on top of their coin reserve.
Down 18%
The price of Bitcoin has fallen more than 18% since hitting an all-time high of more than $126,000 about four weeks ago. At one point this week, prices briefly fell below $100,000.
The selloff comes as macroeconomic pressures, particularly Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s recent hawkish comment, have weakened demand for spot ETFs.
“Macro pressure filtered directly into crypto via four consecutive sessions of approximately $1.3 billion in net outflows from U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs, a reversal that turned one of the strongest tailwinds of 2025 into a near-term headwind,” Singapore-based QCP Capital said in a market update Wednesday.
“Weaker cash demand was met with forced deleveraging, with over $1 billion in long liquidations at the bottom,” the company added.
Ecoinometrics warned in a recent report that the closer the Bitcoin price remains to the $100,000 level, the greater the risk of a feedback loop emerging, in which price weakness triggers outflows from Bitcoin ETFs, which in turn puts further downward pressure on the spot price.
At the time of writing, bitcoin changed hands at $103,200, representing a 1.9% gain over the past 24 hours.
