The sentiment surrounding the bitcoin $BTC$69,579.39 market has shifted to a bullish outlook, with traders increasingly optimistic about a potential surge beyond $80,000.
This insight comes from decentralized exchanges that facilitate on-chain trading for cryptocurrency futures and options.
“Current pricing for options indicates there is approximately a 35% chance that $BTC will exceed $80K by the end of June,” stated Nick Forster, founder of the on-chain options platform Derive.xyz, in an email to CoinDesk. “The recovery in skew alongside this activity suggests many traders anticipate bitcoin will rebound towards the $80K mark between June and September.”
Options are financial instruments allowing investors to speculate on whether $BTC prices will rise or fall. They come with built-in safeguards that limit losses to just a small initial fee rather than risking an entire account if predictions go awry—similar to purchasing a lottery ticket.
A call option enables speculation on price increases, while a put option allows betting against price drops; thus, puts are often viewed as protective measures.
Traders generally monitor options skew—the difference in pricing between calls and puts—to gauge market sentiment. When calls are more expensive than puts, it signals bullishness; conversely, higher put premiums indicate bearish tendencies.
$BTC‘s skew rebounds
The seven-day and thirty-day skews for bitcoin have recovered from -25% panic lows earlier this February when $BTC plummeted towards $25,000 back up to -6% now.
This change reflects traders reducing their reliance on protective puts—indicating less fear of crashes and greater confidence overall.
“Despite previous concerns regarding an impending crash within crypto markets being potentially exaggerated,” Forster remarked. “The derivatives markets suggest these worries may have been overstated. The bitcoin skew—a crucial indicator of sentiment within options markets—has rebounded sharply from around -25% (normalized by at-the-money implied volatility) to roughly +10%, indicating a significant move away from aggressive downside hedging.”
The skews observed through leading centralized exchange Deribit corroborate this trend as well.
Forster noted that recent days have seen an uptick in put writing across various platforms—a sign that traders are willing to accept downside risk for premium returns which aligns with expectations of either stabilization or rising prices ahead.
As per CoinDesk data at press time, bitcoin was trading close to $70,000—a nearly 5% increase over the month.