Altiorix Trades, which tracks market flows on X, said purchases looked especially telling. “The contracts were purchased with $BTC around $80.15K, and by the night price was trading right at that strike. Selling the 80K calls at the same time capped any participation in further upside,” it said.
In the eight hours since the hack, Paradigm traded around $590 million in notional $BTC options blocks. That is about half of the total $BTC options block volume on Deribit, the largest crypto options exchange, over the same period.
The flow was lopsidedly bearish, with most of the amount in puts. The busiest hour came before Binance had said anything and included two 1,000 $BTC blocks of mid-November $74,000 puts, totaling about $155 million in notional value.
Most of the buying occurred in puts just below, but still near, the spot price, not at far lower strikes. That suggests this is not deep-tail hedging, or lottery-ticket bets on a potential crash, but rather conviction hedging against a deeper near-term pullback.
“The buying sits close to the current price, at strikes of $74,000 to $78,000, mostly expiring this week and in mid-November,” Quatravaux noted.
Deribit, too, saw increased activity in put options. The biggest bet involved a multi-leg put strategy across November and December expiries worth around $190 million. Another trade involved 500 $BTC blocks in November $64,000 puts and some flow in March calls. “So not everyone was playing defense,” Quatravaux noted.
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