BlackRock bitcoin ETF options surge

Open interest in options tied to BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust hit new highs on April 27, alongside a nine-day inflow streak for U.S. spot bitcoin funds. (finance.yahoo.com) Yahoo Finance said the inflow streak brought more than $2.1 billion into spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds over the last nine trading days. Scott Melker said the options buildup in IBIT came at the same time. (finance.yahoo.com) Farside Investors’ daily table shows BlackRock’s IBIT took in $256.0 million on April 20, $39.3 million on April 21, $246.9 million on April 22, $167.5 million on April 23, and $22.9 million on April 24. Those five sessions added up to $732.6 million. (farside.co.uk) The same Farside data shows total net inflows across U.S. spot bitcoin funds of $238.4 million, $11.8 million, $335.8 million, $223.3 million, and $14.4 million on those dates. That was $823.7 million for the week, with IBIT accounting for most of it. (farside.co.uk) Options are contracts that let traders bet on price moves or hedge risk without buying or selling the asset outright. In this case, the contracts sit on an exchange-traded fund that holds bitcoin, not on bitcoin trading directly on a crypto exchange. (finance.yahoo.com) Melker said IBIT options have now surpassed Deribit, the offshore exchange long seen as the center of crypto options trading. He said U.S. investors who want listed options exposure would “obviously choose IBIT or BlackRock in the United States.” (finance.yahoo.com) He also said some of the ETF buying may be tied to cash-and-carry trades, where investors buy the fund, short futures priced above spot, and collect the spread. He pointed to a proposed Goldman Sachs product that would hold IBIT and sell calls to generate yield. (finance.yahoo.com) The Block’s bitcoin ETF tracker lists IBIT, Fidelity’s FBTC, Grayscale’s GBTC and other issuers in a market where daily flows are now measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars. As of April 28, its dataset was still updating spot bitcoin ETF flows through late April. (theblock.co) The immediate picture is a bitcoin market where more exposure is being routed through stock-market products with ticker symbols, options chains and daily fund flows. IBIT is sitting at the center of both the buying and the derivatives activity. (finance.yahoo.com) (farside.co.uk)