Bitcoin Options Open Interest Clusters at $70,000 and $72,000 Strikes in Bullish Signal

Heavy call-option positioning at the $70,000 and $72,000 strikes in the Bitcoin options market is signaling expectations for further gains.

CoinDesk reported on July 24 that open interest in Deribit’s Bitcoin options is concentrated at those two strike prices. Notional open interest at the $70,000 and $72,000 levels totals about $5 billion, accounting for roughly 18% of Deribit’s overall $28 billion in Bitcoin options open interest.

Data from options analytics firm Laevitas show about 39,000 call options and 3,800 put options open at the $70,000 strike. At the $72,000 strike, there are about 37,900 call options and 1,200 put options. Call options are typically used to wager on price gains.

Large bull call spread trades have also been detected, with traders buying the $70,000 call and selling the $72,000 call. Laevitas said that structure represents about 49% of total call open interest at the $70,000 strike and 50% at the $72,000 strike.

Jimmy Yang, co-founder of Orbit Markets, an institutional digital-asset liquidity provider, linked the positioning to expectations that the CLARITY Act, a US crypto market structure bill, will pass. Demand for the July 31 expiry $70,000 and $72,000 calls was particularly strong earlier this month, he said. A substantial share of those positions was built on expectations that the CLARITY Act could pass before the end of July.

Still, policy optimism has eased recently. On Polymarket, the odds of the CLARITY Act being enacted this year fell to 38% from 51% earlier this week. CoinDesk said the concentration in options positions reflects bullish expectations, but with some of those bets now being unwound, any breakout still requires further confirmation.