Bitcoin options traders are making a clear bet. They’re piling into out-of-the-money call options at the $82,000 strike price ahead of what’s shaping up to be one of the larger expiry events of the year.
Roughly $6B in notional value across Bitcoin options is scheduled to roll off on May 29, spread across major venues including Deribit and CME. The concentration of open interest at the $82K level tells a specific story: sophisticated market participants are positioning for, or at least hedging against, a push toward new all-time highs.
The $82K magnet
Here’s the thing about options positioning at this scale. When traders cluster their bets around a specific strike, that level starts to act like a gravitational center for market activity. The $82K strike has become exactly that.
The “call-heavy” skew in the current options landscape means that demand for upside exposure significantly outweighs demand for downside protection. In English: more people are buying lottery tickets on a rally than buying insurance against a crash.
