Analysis: After Binance hack, traders bought Bitcoin put options, with strike prices concentrated between $74,000 and $78,000.

October 30: Following the Binance hack incident, large traders increased their Bitcoin put option hedges. Nicolas Quatravaux, Head of EMEA at Paradigm, stated that within 8 hours after the incident, the notional size of BTC options block trades on the platform was approximately $590 million, equivalent to half of Deribit's related block trade volume during the same period, with trading clearly skewed toward put options.

The first large trade occurred at 20:38 UTC, before the news became public: buying put options covering 250 BTC, expiring October 31, with a strike price of $78,000, for a notional size of approximately $20 million. Three minutes later, another purchase of the same size and same contract cost about 35% more.

Buying was mainly concentrated at strike prices of $74,000 to $78,000, with expiries mostly this week and mid-November. Among them, two put option trades expiring in mid-November with a strike price of $74,000 each covered 1,000 BTC, for a combined notional size of approximately $155 million. The report suggests this is more of a hedge against further short-term pullback rather than a bet on an extreme crash.

At the same time, March-expiry call option trades still appeared in the market, indicating not all traders are on the defensive. Standard Chartered warned that market weakness may persist, and a new bottom may not form until incident details become clear and the relevant exchanges and protocols unfreeze the involved tokens.