Bitcoin’s Option Market Is Now Skewed Bullish
Bitcoin’s price jumped to fresh 11-month highs on Friday with the options market betting on a sustained bull move.
Updated Mar 6, 2023 at 3:18 p.m. UTC
![skew_btc_putcall_ratios (5)](https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/ODC9EXhUOZiIA00yneORAU1HwvE=/567x317/filters:quality(80):format(jpg)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/TOF7HSN7QNGFHAO3XF6JI3IGAM.png)
Bitcoin’s price jumped to a fresh 11-month high on Friday, with the options market betting on a sustained bull move.
- The top cryptocurrency by market cap rose to a high of $11,467 during the U.S. trading hours, surpassing the previous multi-high month high of $11,394 reached on Monday.
- Bitcoin has rallied 24% in July and looks overbought as per the 14-day Relative Strength Index, a widely tracked technical indicator.
- Options market data shows sentiment is quite bullish. Options are derivative contracts that give the purchases the right but not the obligation to buy or sell the underlying asset at a predetermined price on or before a specific date. A call option represents the right to buy and the put options gives the buyer the right to sell.
- The one-, three- and six-month put-call skews, which measure the price of puts relative to that of calls, are negative. This is a sign calls, or bullish bets, are drawing higher value than puts, or bearish bets.
- Investors appear to be selling more put options and buying call options because the put-call open interest ratio that measures the number of put options (or bearish bets) open against calls (or bullish bets) has risen to a two-month high of 0.63, according to data source Skew.
![BTC Put-call open interest ratio](https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/i8UpKlUuw5XlVxg9jA8ARgFVTZ0=/560x457/filters:quality(80):format(jpg)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/YS2HNOR6GFCSTIUGRZX43TCXNM.png)
The put-call open interest ratio looks to have risen from 0.50 to 0.63 this week due to greater selling in put options.
With the combination of negative skews and a rising put-call open interest ratio, bitcoin’s latest move above $10,000 looks like it can be sustained.