What Are Bitcoin Options? Use Cases Grow Skyrocketing Adoption
The massive rebound in cryptocurrency prices has boosted the considerable growth of the digital asset market. But a further exciting event is the recent increase in the popularity of crypto options among users.
Crypto options and futures are experiencing an increased demand from traditional institutional participants. Last month, Bitcoin options reached the highest ever trading volume of $26.7 billion. That included the overall crypto options that reached over $38 billion trading volume across major crypto derivatives exchanges.
Such an event is a testimony showing that users are increasingly benefiting from the presence of the Bitcoin options.
What are crypto options?
Crypto options are a kind of derivative contracts that give users the option to sell or purchase a particular cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, at a predetermined price and date.
Industry participants use such crypto derivative instruments to make a profit from market price movements without owning the underlying crypto asset.
Purchasing crypto options mostly gives users a more low-risk and low-cost solution for trading digital assets than crypto futures or perpetual swaps. This explains one of the key reasons for the growth of crypto options.
Uses cases in finance
Overall, crypto derivatives markets are becoming more mainstream. This sector is anticipated to continue experiencing growth as institutional investors seek to create leverage exposures, gain synthetic exposure to price movements, and hedge positions while limiting risks.
In other words, crypto options have become crucial for financial markets for various reasons, such as, leverage exposure, hedging, and market access for industry users. These financial instruments have increased over the past five years to address the increasing needs of users.
To explain the above points further, financial institutions use crypto options to promote financial stability in various ways. For instance, crypto options have emerged as a popular alternative for users who want to diversify their cryptocurrency portfolios.
Furthermore, industry participants use crypto options to take advantage of market movements as a potential for profit making. Also, crypto options have been useful for users who want to limit their risk and exposure to the volatile market.
Factors contributing to the growth
The use of Bitcoin options by industry participants has been rising significantly across the US markets and non-US markets. The increase in the use of these instruments has been attributed to several key factors.
One major driver is the increasing sophistication of crypto users, who are seeking more advanced trading tools and strategies to capitalize on market opportunities.
Moreover, the rising interest in decentralized finance (DeFi) has contributed to the development of more complex financial products, like perpetual swaps and options, which have further boosted the growth of the cryptocurrency derivatives market.
Finally, the increasing acceptance of crypto assets by financial institutions, as well as, the overall bullishness sentiment in the digital asset market, has contributed to the increasing demand for the derivative futures and options.
Conclusion
The landscape of crypto derivatives is growing rapidly, providing users with new opportunities to capitalize on the ever-evolving cryptocurrency market. Currently, crypto derivatives are dominated by futures and options, which are paving for a way for traditional financial institutions to adopt such assets.
The crypto derivative market is anticipated to grow as institutional users demand more complex product offerings and exposure to crypto assets.
Just like crypto perpetuals have experienced rapid growth, there has been a rise of option activities because established players created options infrastructure in the centralized market and decentralized protocols that decrease collateralization requirements, increase speed, and minimize costs.
For instance, in March last year, Goldman Sachs launched a Bitcoin-linked non-deliverable option through partnership with a crypto merchant bank, Galaxy Digital. Also, In March last year, CME started providing Micro Bitcoin and Micro Ether futures to users.