Key points:
Bitcoin futures buy volume indicates that traders are becoming increasingly long-term bullish on BTC this month.
The $110,000 “gap” in CME Group’s Bitcoin futures remains unfilled.
Bitcoin ETF options experience a spike in popularity as IBIT open interest nears $40 billion.
Bitcoin ( BTC ) derivatives traders are flipping “aggressively long” as price squeezes closer to all-time highs.
In a new analysis released on X Friday, J. A. Maartunn, a contributor to the onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant, revealed a significant shift in Bitcoin futures in October.
Bitcoin futures buy volume surges in October
Bitcoin futures markets are undergoing a transformation in sentiment as October gets underway.
As Maartunn showed, net buy volume has surged, and is now outpacing net sell volume by $1.8 billion.
“Futures buyers are stepping up,” he commented alongside a CryptoQuant chart of net taker volumes on the largest crypto exchange, Binance.
The post was a response to observations by CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju, who noted that Bitcoin’s latest local highs came on the back of sustained buy momentum among derivative-market whales.
“A clear sign of aggressive long positioning,” Maartunn added.
Just days ago, futures markets were hitting the headlines for the opposite reason.
A weekend “gap” left in CME Group’s Bitcoin futures had become a new short-term BTC price correction target for traders, lying just above $110,000, per data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView .
Despite gaps being filled within weeks or days in recent months, sellers failed to initiate a deep enough retracement this week.
As Cointelegraph reported , plans are afoot at CME to make Bitcoin futures trade around the clock, removing the “gap” phenomenon.
Bloomberg analyst: Bitcoin ETFs are “no joke”
The US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), meanwhile, took in more than $600 million during Thursday’s Wall Street trading session.
Related: Bitcoin’s next stop could be $125K: Here’s why
With the week’s total at $2.25 billion at the time of writing, ETF data continued to surprise.
In an X post Friday, James Check, creator of onchain data resource Checkonchain, flagged surging growth in options on the largest spot ETF, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT).
“The growth of IBIT options is the least discussed, but most significant markets structure shift for Bitcoin since the ETFs themselves,” he argued.
“Not only did IBIT surpass Deribit, but Options are now larger then futures by open interest.”
Eric Balchunas, a dedicated ETF analyst for Bloomberg, initially reported on IBIT surpassing Coinbase’s Deribit, with the former’s open interest now at $38 billion.
“I told y’all ETFs are no joke.. Fat crypto margins in trouble,” he concluded.
