Analysis: Traders purchase Bitcoin put options following the Binance hack, with strike prices concentrated between $74,000 and $78,000

After the Binance hack, large traders ramped up their positions in Bitcoin put options for hedging. Nicolas Quatravaux, head of Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at Paradigm, said that within 8 hours of the incident, the notional value of BTC block trades on the platform reached roughly $590 million, equivalent to half of the related block trading volume on Deribit in the same period, with trades clearly skewed toward put options. The first large trade took place at 20:38 UTC, before the news was made public: a purchase of put options covering 250 BTC, expiring October 31, with a strike price of $78,000, with a notional size of around $20 million. Three minutes later, another buy of the same contract incurred a cost about 35% higher. Buy orders were mainly concentrated on strike prices between $74,000 and $78,000, with most expiring this week and mid-November. Notably, two put option trades expiring mid-November with a strike price of $74,000 each covered 1,000 BTC, totaling a notional size of around $155 million. The report argues that this move is more of a hedge against further short-term pullbacks rather than a bet on an extreme market crash. Meanwhile, call options expiring in March were still being traded in the market, indicating not all traders are taking a defensive stance. Standard Chartered warned that market weakness could persist, and a new market bottom may not form until incident details are clarified and relevant exchanges and protocols unfreeze the involved tokens.