Analysis: About $590M in BTC Options Block Trades in the 8 Hours After Binance Hack, Led by Puts

October 30 — CoinDesk reports that in the roughly 8 hours after Binance was hacked, notional block-trade volume in BTC options on Paradigm was about $590 million, roughly half of Deribit's BTC options block volume over the same period, with flows clearly bearish and dominated by puts. The first trade came about 15 minutes after funds first flowed out of Binance's wallet and before the news was public, when a buyer purchased 250 puts expiring October 31 with a $78,000 strike; in the most active one-hour window, two more block trades of 1,000 contracts each, expiring mid-November with a $74,000 strike, changed hands for about $155 million in notional value. Paradigm noted that buying was concentrated at strikes near spot, such as $74,000-$78,000, suggesting more of a hedge against a short-term pullback than a bet on a crash. According to Velo data, BTC one-week options put skew rose to about 18% at one point.