BTC

“IBIT just flipped Deribit in options open interest Two years vs ten years. Let that sink in. BlackRock's $IBIT options hit $27.61B in open interest last Friday. Deribit, which has been running since 2016, sat at $26.90B. First time ever that onshore U.S. regulated derivatives are bigger than the offshore venue that basically set crypto's volatility regime for a decade. ❯ But here's what most people are framing wrong. Everyone's calling this a bullish signal and technically it is, structurally. But the way institutional money uses options is completely different from how retail uses them. • Retail buys calls to FOMO into upside • Institutions buy puts to hedge existing spot exposure • ETF holders can't easily short $BTC directly, so puts are their only hedge tool That's actually why IBIT's implied volatility is running slightly higher than Deribit's. It's not because institutions are more bullish. It's because demand for put options as hedges is keeping IV elevated. ❯ Now look at where the positioning actually is. IBIT call open interest is targeting $BTC near $109,709. Deribit's positioning is more conservative, centered around $106,000. Both bullish, but IBIT's bets are further out of the money and weighted toward October 2026 expiries. Deribit is more tactical, August expiries dominate there. Longer dated. Further OTM. That's not someone chasing price. That's someone managing a portfolio with a long horizon. ❯ So who actually moves price from here? Institutions are already in. They're hedging, not adding. The capital wave that brought $IBIT from zero to flipping Deribit in two years is mostly positioned. BlackRock alone pulled in over $900M in a single month earlier this year. The next leg up won't come from them. It'll come from whoever isn't in yet, or from a macro catalyst that forces short covering. 47 days of negative funding. Whale longs at record levels on Hyperliquid. IBIT options now bigger than Deribit. The infrastructure is institutional. The next move still needs a trigger.”