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The Bitcoin Options traders have been pricing in low implied volatility, but on-chain data shows a setup ripe for amplified price swings.
Bitcoin Options ATM IV Has Been Trending Lower
In its latest weekly report, the analytics firm Glassnode has talked about how the volatility risk associated with Bitcoin looks from the perspective of on-chain analysis.
The indicator shared by Glassnode is the Realized Supply Density, which tells us about how concentrated the cryptocurrency’s supply is around the current spot price.
When the value of this metric is high, it means the investors have participated in a large amount of buying at or near the asset’s latest price. “In such environments, even modest price fluctuations can affect a broad swath of investors, often amplifying market sensitivity and, in turn, volatility potential,” explains the analytics firm.
Below is the chart for the indicator shared by in the report.
As is visible in the graph, the Bitcoin Realized Supply Density has gone through an uplift during the past few weeks, which suggests accumulation has taken place around the current spot price. “This concentration raises the probability of outsized reactions to price movements, increasing volatility risk in the near term,” notes Glassnode.
While on-chain data may hint that volatility could go up in the future, it would appear the traders on the Options market don’t quite think the same, as the At-The-Money Implied Volatility (ATM IV) has been going down.
The IV is a metric that represents the traders’ expectations of how volatile Bitcoin will be over a given period, based on the pricing of Options contracts. The ATM version of the indicator specifically calculates this expectation based on Options closest to the latest spot price.
Here is a chart that shows the trend in the Bitcoin Options ATM IV across different expiration timeframes:
From the above graph, it’s apparent that the Bitcoin Options ATM IV has been going down for all major tenors, an indication that the traders don’t expect high volatility for the cryptocurrency in the near future.
“Historically, such complacency in volatility pricing has often served as a counter-trend signal, preceding periods of heightened volatility,” says the analytics firm. With on-chain data suggesting increased volatility risk and this signal forming at the same time, it now remains to be seen how Bitcoin would develop in the coming days.
BTC Price
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $108,800, up more than 3.5% in the last week.
Featured image from Dall-E, Glassnode.com, chart from TradingView.com
Keshav is currently a senior writer at NewsBTC and has been attached to the website since June 14, 2021.
Keshav has been writing for many years, first as a hobbyist and later as a freelancer. He has experience working in a variety of niches, even fiction at one point, but the cryptocurrency industry has been the longest he has been attached to.
In terms of official educational qualifications, Keshav holds a bachelor’s degree in Physics from one of the premier institutes of India, the University of Delhi (DU). He started the degree with an aim of eventually making a career in Physics, but the onset of COVID led to a shift in plans. The virus meant that the college classes had to be delivered in the online-mode and with it came free time for him to explore other passions.
Initially only seeking to make some beer money, Keshav unexpectedly landed clients offering real projects, after which there was no looking back. Writing was something he had always enjoyed and to be able to do it for a living was like a dream come true.
Keshav completed his Physics degree in 2022 and has been focusing on his writing career since, but that doesn’t mean his passion for Physics has ended. He eventually plans to re-enter university to obtain a masters degree in the same field, but perhaps only to satiate his own interest rather than for using it as a means to find employment..
Keshav has found blockchain and its concepts fascinating ever since he started going down the rabbit-hole back in 2020. On-chain analysis in particular has been something he likes to research more about, which is why his NewsBTC pieces tend to involve it in some form.
Being of the science background, Keshav likes if concepts are clear and consistent, so he generally explains the indicators he talks about in a bit of detail so that the readers can perhaps come out having understood and learnt something new.
As for hobbies, Keshav is super into football, anime, and videogames. He enjoys football not only as a watcher, but also as a player. For games, Keshav generally tends towards enjoying singleplayer adventures, with EA FC (formerly FIFA) being the only online game he is active in. Though, perhaps due to being ultra-focused on the game, he is today a semi-pro on the EA FC scene, regularly participating in tournaments and sometimes even taking back prize money.
Because of his enthusiasm for anime and games, he also self-learned Japanese along the way to consume some of the untranslated gems out there. The skill didn’t merely remain as just a hobby, either, as he put it to productive use during his exploration for small-time gigs at the start of COVID, fulfilling a couple of Japanese-to-English translation jobs.
Keshav is also big into fitness, with agility and acceleration-related workouts making a big part of his program due to the relevance they have in football. On top of that, he also has a more traditional strength based program for the gym, which he does to maintain an overall fitness level of his body.
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