Ethereum (ETH) Options Trading Surges to Record $17.9B in January

• The put-call ratio for open interest in Ethereum options was 0.31 as of Friday’s expiration.
• The SEC postponed its judgment on the proposed ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

With only four days remaining in the month of January, the volume of Ethereum (ETH) options trading across leading crypto derivatives exchanges hit a record high of $17.9 billion. On Friday at 3:00 a.m. ET, almost 932,000 ETH options expired across several centralized derivatives exchanges, based on options data from GreeksLive.

According to GreeksLive, the put-call ratio for open interest in Ethereum options was 0.31 as of Friday’s expiration. The data indicated that the put-call ratio for ether options on Deribit had dropped to 0.3 before the options’ expiration.

Investors Optimistic

Generally speaking, a put-call ratio below 0.7 indicates positive market sentiment, whilst a put-call ratio beyond 1 indicates negative emotion. The presence of more calls (options to purchase) than puts (options to sell) indicates a positive mood in the market when the put-call ratio is less than one.

The calls with a strike price of $2,350 and an expiration date of February now have the highest level of open interest, according to data from Deribit. Many futures traders are predicting that the price of ether will increase above this level by mid-February, thus this might be seen as positive.

James Seyffart, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, estimates that the approval rate for spot ether ETFs will be about 60% for May.

The SEC postponed its judgment on the proposed ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) from BlackRock and Grayscale earlier this week. Not only are BlackRock and Grayscale competing for an Ether ETF, but VanEck and Ark 21Shares are as well. Experts predicted that the SEC would defer a ruling on the ETFs until later this year, so the delays were not unexpected.

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