Ethereum Put/Call Ratio Jumps – Are Bearish Bets Building Up Ahead of Shappella Upgrade?
The ratio between the open interest of Ether (ETH) put and call options jumped to its highest level since last May at 0.47 on Tuesday, according to data presented by crypto data analytics and news firm The Block.
That could suggest a build-up of bearish bets in the market ahead of an upcoming series of major upgrades to the Ethereum network on the 12th of April that will, amongst other things, allow for the withdrawal of staked Ether tokens.
A ratio in open interest of put and call options below 1 means that investors favor owning call options (bets on the price rising) over put options (bets on the price dropping).
While the ratio is still well below 1, meaning investors still resoundingly favor bullish option bets, the recent rise in the ratio suggests these bullish bets have been pulled back on sharply in recent days.
Ether’s Put/Call open interest ratio has seen a rapid jump from its end-of-March levels of around 0.37.
As well as possibly reflecting bets that there will a post-upgrade sell-off, the rise in the ratio could also reflect that more traders have become interested in shorting Ether in wake of recent price gains.
ETH was last changing hands just above $1,900, having made decent progress towards $2,000 in recent days.
It’s worth noting that a large fall in the dollar value of aggregated Ether option open interest since the end of March might also explain the rise in Ether’s put/call ratio.
Open interest in Ether options was last just under $5.0 billion having recently been as high as $7.5 billion.
Open interest often sees a big drop at the end of each quarter as investors amid a wave of option expiries and it seems that the expiry of bullish call option bets likely dominated.
It will be interesting to see whether
Read more on cryptonews.com
