One trader's $68 million bitcoin options bet targets $90,000 just after the US midterms, Derive's largest open bitcoin position

One trader has placed a large options bet that bitcoin will be above $90,000 shortly after next week's US midterm elections, the decentralized options exchange Derive told CoinDesk on Monday.

On October 20, a single wallet bought 800 call option contracts with a $90,000 strike price that expire on November 6. Each contract covers one bitcoin. A call gives its holder the right, but not the obligation, to buy at the strike price, so these contracts have value at expiry only if bitcoin is above $90,000. Derive said the position is worth about $68 million at current prices and called it "the largest open Bitcoin position on Derive."

The trade was not a plain purchase. The same wallet sold 400 calls at $90,000 expiring October 30 and 400 calls at $100,000 expiring in March 2027, and the money from those sales helped pay for the November contracts.

Other bets are shifting the same way on Derive. The platform's market-implied probability of bitcoin topping $100,000 by Christmas rose to 12% from 9.7% a week earlier, and the implied chance of it falling below $70,000 by then dropped to 11% from 15.6%. On the centralized exchange Deribit, short-dated put options still cost more than calls, a sign traders are also paying for protection against a fall.

Bitcoin was trading around $80,000 on Monday morning, near where it stood on Saturday, CoinDesk reported.