Bitcoin Options Traders Hedge as Uncertainty Persists, Anchorage Says

Bitcoin options markets are signaling caution rather than panic, according to new research from Anchorage Digital. In its latest Prime Signal report, the firm’s head of research, David Lawant, finds that traders across both crypto-native venues and traditional investment wrappers are paying up for downside protection—especially over the very near term.

The study looked at options activity across Deribit and two major exchange-traded fund products tied to Bitcoin exposure: BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) and Strategy’s Bitcoin-linked instruments. Anchorage argues that this cross-market view helps capture differences between crypto-native positioning and more institutional or retail flows than a single venue alone.

Key takeaways

• Deribit and IBIT options show elevated put skew, consistent with demand for downside hedges at a premium rather than outright bullish bets.
• Defensive positioning is unusually high within both markets’ historical ranges—ranked in the 82nd percentile for IBIT and the 84th percentile for Deribit over their respective multi-year windows.
• Anchorage reports Bitcoin options have spent nearly half of 2026 pricing higher one-week implied volatility than one-month implied volatility, an inversion that has typically been temporary.
• In Strategy’s options market, put skew remains below levels Anchorage associates with past stress episodes like forced deleveraging.

Downside hedging stays in focus across venues

Anchorage’s central finding is that traders are not just buying options—they are choosing structures that emphasize downside risk. In both the Deribit and IBIT options markets, the firm observed elevated put skew, a pattern that generally indicates market participants are willing to pay more for protection against lower prices than for upside participation.

Anchorage quantifies this defensiveness by comparing current activity against historical behavior. It reports that defensive positioning sits at the 82nd percentile within IBIT’s history and at the 84th percentile across Deribit’s five-year record, suggesting that the current hedging intensity is high relative to what has been typical.

Why the “one-week vs one-month” volatility inversion matters

Beyond skew, Anchorage examined the term structure of implied volatility—specifically how volatility priced for the coming week compares with volatility priced for the following month. The report says Bitcoin options have spent nearly half of 2026 with one-week implied volatility higher than one-month implied volatility, an inversion it describes as unusual and historically episodic.

Anchorage attributes the pattern to a chain of catalysts spanning macroeconomic conditions, geopolitical developments, and crypto-specific drivers that have kept traders focused on near-term risks. Instead of signaling a stable trend expectation, the data points toward “event window” caution: participants appear more concerned about what could happen soon than about setting a long-range directional view.

Lawant said he is watching for a change in that relationship—specifically, whether one-month implied volatility begins to exceed one-week implied volatility again. He frames such a shift as a sign that the market may be growing more comfortable looking further out rather than concentrating hedges around immediate uncertainty.

Strategy’s options market: hedging without “crisis” pricing

Anchorage’s analysis also addresses whether the options market is pricing Strategy (MSTR) as if it faces a severe downside scenario. While the company has experienced weakness in its equity-related products, Anchorage argues that options demand for protection has not escalated to stress levels typically associated with broad systemic fear.

Earlier coverage from the market has highlighted the decline in Strategy’s perpetual preferred stock, STRC. According to the details cited in Anchorage’s research discussion, STRC fell as low as $82.53 on June 22—around 17% below its $100 par value—before partially recovering after Strategy disclosed it had increased its fiat reserves to $1.3 billion. By Thursday, STRC was reported as trading around $77, roughly 23% below par, based on the figures referenced in the report write-up.

The weakness has also extended to Strategy’s common shares. The article notes that MSTR has been down about 78% over the past year and traded around $87 on Thursday, according to Yahoo Finance data.

However, Anchorage’s options read-through is more measured than the equity performance. The firm reports that Strategy-related options remain well below stress levels seen during prior market corrections. While put skew indicates that hedging demand is present, the skew has not moved into ranges that Anchorage associates with fears of forced deleveraging or a broader crisis.

That distinction matters for market participants because it separates “risk management” from “contagion pricing.” Put skew can rise for many reasons—structural hedging, volatility supply/demand, or tactical protection—so Anchorage’s comparison to historical stress levels is intended to show that traders are cautious but not uniformly expecting a severe unwind scenario.

Broader implications for how traders are framing risk

Taken together, Anchorage’s findings suggest a market where near-term downside hedging remains the dominant theme, even as different trading ecosystems show broadly consistent behavior. Elevated put skew in both Deribit and IBIT indicates that the appetite for protection is not limited to a single buyer type or venue; it spans the crypto-native options market and a key regulated product channel.

At the same time, the volatility term structure points to timing rather than direction. The one-week/one-month implied volatility inversion described in the report implies that traders are treating the next few days to weeks as more uncertain than the later month horizon—consistent with a market responding to catalysts as they approach, rather than immediately repricing longer-term outlooks.

For Strategy-related risk, the message is similar: equity weakness does not automatically translate into options-market “panic pricing.” Anchorage says the hedging activity in Strategy’s options is still below the kind of levels it has previously linked to forced deleveraging dynamics.

Going forward, traders may want to track whether the one-month implied volatility premium returns over the one-week measure—an indicator Lawant flagged as a potential shift from immediate risk management to a longer-term posture. Until then, Anchorage’s data suggests the market will likely keep prioritizing near-term protection across both crypto and ETF-linked Bitcoin options.