Over the past two months, the open interest on Ether (ETH) options increased by 50% to reach $3.1 billion, with ETH price gaining 44% in that time period. Ether's price appreciation and the rising options open interest has resulted in a potentially historic $1.15 billion expiry set for March 26. Most exchanges offer monthly exposures, although a few also hold weekly options for short-term contracts. February faced the most significant expiry on record, with $630 million worth of options contracts, and this figure represented 23% of all the open interest at that time. The above data shows that Ether's March …

As Bitcoin price dropped below $55,000 on March 15, Ether (ETH) pulled back to confirm the $1,750 level as support. This signals optimism from professional traders despite the 12% drop that occurred after Ether price peaked at $1,950 on March 13. While Ether may be bullish from the price perspective, recent news surrounding the protocol hasn't been positive. Last week, Cointelegraph reported the rising tensions between miners and developers as they clashed over the EIP-1559 proposal, which is expected to reduce fee volatility and significantly impact miner revenue. Moreover, the surging Ethereum network fees caused the volumes at decentralized exchange …

To date, Ether (ETH) price has gained 85% in 2021, and options traders are still highly optimistic about the altcoin's short-term performance. The upcoming March 26 expiry holds over 96,000 ($172 million) call option contracts open interest between $2,240 and $3,520. Does a 25% or higher gain correctly reflect the current market sentiment, or are these traders simply over-optimistic about Ether's odds? Even though the effective price for the right to acquire Ether at a fixed price on March 26 is much lower, these options cost buyers at least $2 million. If Ether fails to increase by 25% from the …

On Feb. 20, Ether (ETH) price rallied to a new high at $2,015, and this caused multiple indicators to display signs of excessive optimism. While the excitement could be easily justified by Ether's year-to-date 176% gain, these warning signs should not be ignored. One of the primary driving factors of the current bullish sentiment is the launch of CME ETH futures and Grayscale Investments' ETH trust reaching $6.3 billion assets under management. The decentralized finance phenomenon also continues, as there is currently more than $21 billion worth of Ether locked in DeFi. Currently, the Crypto Fear & Greed Index is …

Technology giant Amazon just announced the general availability of Ethereum on its managed blockchain. According to Amazon Web Services, or AWS, users now have the ability to “provision Ethereum nodes” and connect to the blockchain’s mainnet in addition to the Ropsten and Rinkeby testnets through the Amazon Managed Blockchain. The program claims to offer secure access to the network with “standard open-source Ethereum APIs” and sync to the Ethereum blockchain. “Amazon Managed Blockchain monitors node health, replaces unhealthy nodes, and automates Ethereum software upgrades, improving the availability of customers’ Ethereum infrastructure,” said the firm. “In addition to DeFi applications, customers …

This week Ether (ETH) price finally broke through the $2,000 level as aggressive institutional inflow through Grayscale Investments products and declining exchange reserves signaled that buying pressure was increasing. While many traders are skilled at using perpetual futures and the basic margin investing tools available on most exchanges, they may be unaware of additional instruments that can be used to maximize their gains. One simple way, albeit expensive, is buying Ether call option contracts. For example, a March 26 call option with a $1,760 strike trades at $340. In the current situation, the holder would only profit if Ether trades …

Bitcoin’s (BTC) abysmal December 2017 futures launch quickly fell short of investors expectations and even though the CME BTC market has surpassed $2.5 billion in open interest, the initial launch has reinforced the narrative that this week’s CME ETH futures launch will be equally bearish in the short term. Prior to the CME BTC futures launch, Bitcoin had already gained 1,900% for the year, a rally which some analysts argue was propelled by the expectation of regulated futures. Now that the CME ETH futures have launched, investors are watching closely to see if Ether (ETH) will face a similar situation …

Ether’s (ETH) $10,000 Dec. 31 call options recently came under the spotlight after surpassing $15.2 million in open interest (8,400 contracts). These instruments give the buyer the right to acquire Ether at a future date for a fixed price and the seller is obliged to honor it. For this right, the buyer pays an upfront fee (premium) to the call option seller. For this reason, call options are deemed neutral-to-bullish as they give its buyer the possibility of high leverage with a little upfront investment. This ‘right’ is currently being traded for $263, equivalent to 14% of the underlying Dec. …

Ether (ETH) price has rallied by 33% over the last five days and data shows that as this occurred some buyers began to use excessive leverage. Although this is not necessarily negative, it should be considered a yellow flag as a higher premium on futures contracts for short periods is normal. Although Ether’s upward movement has been going for an extended period, it was only in February that Ether finally broke the $1,500 psychological barrier and entered price discovery mode. To assess whether the market is overly optimistic, there are a few essential derivatives metrics to review. One is the …

A growing number of options traders are sitting on large unrealized losses following Ether’s (ETH) latest price surge, highlighting once again the volatile, unpredictable nature of the cryptocurrency market. Pankaj Balani, CEO of Delta Exchange — a St. Vincent-based cryptocurrency derivatives platform — told Cointelegraph that he has observed “a lot of naked call writing activity in ETH for deep out of the money call options all the way up to $2,000 and $3,000 strikes.” A call option becomes deep out of the money if its strike price is significantly above the current price of an underlying asset — in …

After bouncing from the recent short-term low, Bitcoin (BTC) price posted a 15% gain over three days as it climbed from $32,400 to $37,200. This was an impressive move given that BTC price had been trading in a sideways range for weeks and regardless of the reasons behind the surge, one would expect large traders and arbitrage desks to follow the trend. Interestingly, this is not the case as many of the top traders opened short positions as BTC commenced its 15% move. Even if a trader lacks confidence in a potential retest of the $42,000 all-time high, opening shorts …

The price of Ether (ETH), the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain network, achieved a new all-time high of $1,500 today. Data suggests that the ETH options market showed dominant call activity, and this may be a primary factor in the rally to a new high. Across major exchanges, the price of ETH surpassed $1,500 after the options market showed dominant call activity. In the options market, there are two types of contracts: puts and calls. Puts are sell orders, and calls are buy orders. When there are more calls in the market, it means the options market is bullish. …