According to the new report shared by Anchorage Digital’s research unit manager David Lawant, the demand for hedging against downside risks in Bitcoin options remains high. The study pointed out that both crypto-focused investors and exchange-traded fund participants continue to seek protection against the decline.
Three markets examined together
The report evaluated options trades on Deribit, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust IBIT, and Strategy stock MSTR. Anchorage Digital stated that considering these three areas together helps to show the trend of crypto-native investors, institutional players and individual investors in a broader context than a single market.
Anchorage Digital is known as a US-based financial company that provides custody, trading and infrastructure services in the field of digital assets. According to the report, put tendency remained high in both Deribit and IBIT options markets. This chart showed that investors took positions by paying a premium against downside risks rather than expecting a new rise.
According to the report’s findings, defensive positioning has increased to 82 percent in IBIT’s history and 84 percent in Deribit’s last five-year history.
Short-term risk perception comes to the fore
The research also pointed to a remarkable volatility pattern in Bitcoin options through 2026. Accordingly, the market has priced the implied volatility for the next week higher than for the next month for almost half the year. The report noted that this reversal structure has historically been seen intermittently and for short periods of time, but this time it has become more pronounced with the succession of macroeconomic, geopolitical and crypto-specific developments.
This outlook suggests that option traders are prioritizing managing short-term uncertainties rather than predicting a clear direction. Lawant stated that one-month implied volatility rising above one-week level again may indicate that the market is starting to look more comfortably beyond immediate risks.
There is pressure on the Strategy side, but there is no panic signal
Anchorage Digital’s analysis also revealed that there is a cautious stance on the Strategy front, but investors are not pricing in a heavy downside scenario for now. It was stated that despite the recent weakness in the company’s preferred and common shares, the stress levels seen in previous sharp correction periods in the options market have not yet been reached.
Strategy’s perpetual preferred stock, STRC, fell to $82.53 on June 22, approximately 17 percent below its $100 nominal value. There was a partial recovery in the stock after the company announced that it increased its cash reserves to 1.3 billion dollars. As of Thursday, STRC was trading at around $77, about 23 percent below par value.
The weakness was not limited to STRC. Strategy’s common stock, MSTR, has also fallen nearly 78 percent in the past year and traded around $87 on Thursday, according to Yahoo Finance data.
However, the report emphasized that put bias in MSTR options has not reached levels associated with forced deleveraging or fears of a broader crisis. Strategy, chaired by Michael Saylor, was one of the companies that highlighted the corporate Bitcoin treasury model in 2020. The company has 847,363 BTC on its balance sheet.
