Analyst Highlights Bitcoin Options Traders’ Optimism

In February, the most popular position on the Deribit crypto derivatives exchange was call options on Bitcoin at $110,000, set to expire on March 28. This was noted by Omkar Godbole from CoinDesk.

Buyers of these contracts have already paid a total net premium of over $6 million for bullish risk, the expert pointed out.

A call option grants the right, but not the obligation, to purchase the underlying asset at a set price within a specified period. Buyers of such options implicitly bet on a market rise.

Since the beginning of the month, Bitcoin has been trading in the range of $95,000-100,000. Bulls have seen some positive developments, such as Strategy’s (formerly MicroStrategy) purchases of digital gold and the Abu Dhabi sovereign fund’s disclosure of $436 million investments in BlackRock’s BTC-ETF.

However, macroeconomic issues, highlighted by negative US inflation data and liquidity outflows caused by frequent boom-bust cycles in meme tokens, have limited growth potential, Godbole believes.

Over the weekend, the market capitalization of the LIBRA coin soared above $4 billion, only for the price to plummet by 94% within minutes. Initially, the meme coin was promoted by Argentina’s President Javier Milei, who later deleted the post. As a result, the politician faced legal issues and the threat of impeachment.

Amberdata’s Director of Derivatives, Greg Magadini, confirmed that a series of news was optimistic for Bitcoin, primarily referring to Abu Dhabi’s investments. However, this did not lead to a real spike in spot prices, he added.

“Combine these news with bearish events in the meme coin segment (a source of negative headlines), such as the LIBRA crash, pumpfun mania, and the growing supply of altcoins, and you see the market is treading water. All this supports my thesis of a ‘sideways’ market with reduced volatility,” Magadini stated.

Earlier, CryptoQuant experts concluded that Bitcoin might enter a new bearish phase due to a decline in investors’ risk appetite.