Hedge Funds Pile Back Into Crypto Call Options After ‘Horrific’ Liquidations

(Bloomberg) -- Crypto traders are piling back into optimistic bets in the options market almost immediately after one of the worst liquidations of bullish positions this year over the weekend. 

Traders from both offshore exchanges and US over-the-counter desks are buying calls that gives them the option to buy Bitcoin at $90,000 and more later this year, according to market participants. 

About $1.1 billion was liquidated in crypto bets on Aug. 4, one of the largest selloffs this year, according to Coinglass. In the rout that began during Asian trading hours, Bitcoin tumbled as much 17% and Ether lost more than a fifth of its value at one point. Both traded higher by Tuesday. Roughly 50% of the open interest in crypto derivatives was liquidated during the plunge, according to Yevgeniy Feldman at SwapGlobal, which provides prime brokerage and swaps to institutional investors.

“People got extremely liquidated on longs, it was horrific,” Feldman said. “But the US hedge-fund and institutional participants that trade options via OTC desks on Monday and Tuesday restarted making bullish options bets by buying call spreads on Solana and Bitcoin.” 

One of the key driving forces behind the rebound has been the soaring demand for Bitcoin on Coinbase Global Inc., Feldman said. That can be seen in the bid-to-offer ratio, where the total amount of commitments to buy Bitcoin far outstrips those seeking to sell, according to the exchange’s order book data complied by SwapGlobal. 

“Such imbalances indicate that there is a tremendous amount of waiting buyers at $49,000 and below,” Feldman said. Bitcoin dropped as low a $49,212 on Monday, the least since February. 

Short-term hedging against a lower price has grown quickly on offshore exchanges over the last few days. The put-to-call ratio on Deribit remains elevated with more buying for puts than calls in the past 24 hours. The put buying tends to be more pronounced on exchanges since retail investors using such platforms tend to trade crypto in and out of the asset class with more hedging in options compared to US-based institutions which would have large holdings of Bitcoin and use OTC desks, Feldman said. 

“While skews heavily favor puts in the front of the curve, post (the US presidential) election skews remain to the call even after the precipitous sell off,” said Ravi Doshi, head of markets at prime broker FalconX. “As has been the case for most of the year, traders continue to expect a bullish back half of the year in Bitcoin.”

As of today, the September $90,000 calls, December $100,000 calls, and March $100,000 calls are the largest open interest strikes in the listed market, with nearly $1 billion in notional value for just those three options, according to Doshi. Bitcoin was about 4.5% higher at $56,850 on Tuesday in New York.

The bullish outlook on crypto toward the end of this year is in part driven by the rising odds of a second US presidency of Donald Trump, who has become a pro-crypto advocate.

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