Bitcoin’s Slide Has Traders Hedging Against a Drop to $70,000
02/27/2025 02:23
(Bloomberg) -- With the so-called Trump bump fading across markets, Bitcoin options are showing that investors and traders are hedging against a decline in the cryptocurrency to levels last seen just after election day. Most Read from BloombergThe Trump Administration Takes Aim at Transportation ResearchNYC’s Congestion Pricing Pulls In $48.6 Million in First MonthShelters Await Billions in Federal Money for Homelessness ProvidersNew York’s Congestion Pricing Plan Faces Another Legal ShowdownNYC
(Bloomberg) -- With the so-called Trump bump fading across markets, Bitcoin options are showing that investors and traders are hedging against a decline in the cryptocurrency to levels last seen just after election day.
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The open interest, or the number of outstanding contracts, for put options with a strike price of $70,000 is the second highest among all contracts expiring on Feb. 28, according to data from Deribit, the largest crypto options exchange. A total of $4.9 billion in open interest is set to expire on Friday.
Bitcoin has tumbled roughly 20% from a record high since Donald Trump’s January inauguration, as his combative stance against allies and geopolitical rivals alike shakes investor confidence, and concerns about elevated inflation linger. The crypto sector was also shook by a record hack of the Bybit exchange last week.
“Tariff policies are further dampening the outlook, and stubbornly high short-term inflation expectations add to the overall caution,” said Chris Newhouse, director of research at Cumberland Labs. “The Bybit exchange hack has exerted additional downward pressure on price and negatively impacted sentiment.”
Bitcoin fell for a fourth consecutive day, dropping around 5% to $84,075 as of 1:52 p.m. in New York, and bringing its decline of the period to around 13%. That’s the biggest four-day slump since August. Other tokens such as Ether and Solana continued to be hit harder, with each down between 9% and 10%, respectively.
There were liquidations of around $2 billion of bullish bets the past three days, according to data compiled by Coinglass. Bitcoin perpetual futures, one of the most common ways for offshore investors to add leverage, saw a sharp drop in long positions during the period.
The most recent price decline was also likely due in part to waning demand for Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. As a group, the funds have seen about $2.1 billion in outflows over the past six days.
“This is a mix of spot selling and basis unwind,” said Bohan Jiang, head of over-the-counter options trading at Abra. “In my view, nearly all of this is from ETF spot outflows from directional traders.”
Investors yanked more than $1 billion from spot Bitcoin ETFs on Tuesday, the biggest outflow since the cohort debut in January last year. The outflows were led by Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC), followed by BlackRock Inc.’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT). The group of ETFs that hold Ether directly also saw outflows to a milder degree to the tune of $130 million.