{"id":14627,"date":"2025-02-24T06:16:58","date_gmt":"2025-02-24T06:16:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=14627"},"modified":"2025-02-24T06:16:58","modified_gmt":"2025-02-24T06:16:58","slug":"solana-whales-increase-engagement-in-bearish-options-plays-on-deribit-amid-sol-meltdown-and-impending-unlock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=14627","title":{"rendered":"Solana Whales Increase Engagement in Bearish Options Plays on Deribit Amid SOL Meltdown and Impending Unlock"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Deribit’s options market for Solana’s SOL token has become active, with whales engaging in bearish bets as the token’s price continues to decline ahead of an impending multi-billion dollar unlock. <\/p>\n

Last week, SOL block trades totaling $32.39 million in notional value crossed the tape on Deribit, representing nearly 25% of the total options activity of $130.74 million. The remainder of the activity comprised screen trades, according to Amberdata. That’s the second-highest proportion of block trades to total activity on record.<\/p>\n

A “block trade” in options refers to a significant, privately negotiated options transaction between two parties involving a large number of contracts. Such trades, typically associated with whale activity, are executed over-the-counter and outside the regular order book and then booked on the exchange, allowing for a minimal impact on the market prices.<\/p>\n

Options are derivative contracts that give the purchaser the right but not the obligation to buy or sell the underlying asset, in this case, SOL, at a preset price on or before a specific date. A call option gives the right to buy, while a put option provides the right to sell. On Deribit, which accounts for over 85% of the global crypto options activity, one options contract represents 1 SOL.<\/p>\n

Last week’s spike in SOL block trades featured a preference for put options, which traders use to hedge against or profit from a potential price slide.<\/p>\n

“Nearly 80% of the block-trade volume was concentrated in put contracts. Compared to only 40% puts for BTC and 37.5% puts for ETH during the same timeframe,” Greg Magadini, director of derivatives at Amberdata, said.<\/p>\n

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The whale demand for put options comes as SOL’s outlook appears grim following the 46% price slide to $160 in just over five weeks. The activity on the Solana blockchain, which became a go-to-place for memecoin traders last year, peaked with the launch of the TRUMP token on Jan. 17, three days before Donald Trump was inaugurated as the President of the U.S.<\/p>\n

Since then, the number of daily transactions on Solana and the cumulative daily volume on the Solana-based decentralized exchanges has declined significantly, according to data source Artemis. That has weakened the bullish case for SOL.<\/p>\n

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Plus, the impending SOL token unlock<\/a> on Jan. 1 presents a significant headwind, per Deribit’s Asia Business Development Head Lin Chen.<\/p>\n

“Solana (SOL) will have a major token unlock event on March 1, releasing 11.2 million SOL tokens, valued at approximately $2.07 billion. This represents 2.29% of the total supply. A significant portion of the unlock comes from the FTX estate and a foundation sale,” Chen said.<\/p>\n

Chen explained that the large unlock could breed market volatility as it accounts for nearly 59% of SOL’s daily spot trading volume. Hence, its natural to see a lot of hedging flow in put options in anticipation of a potential extended SOL price slide.<\/p>\n

“Many traders would also take this opportunity to long Vol[atility] to generate good yield,” Chen noted.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Deribit’s options market for Solana’s SOL token has become active, with whales engaging in bearish bets as the token’s price continues to decline ahead of an impending multi-billion dollar unlock. Last week, SOL block trades totaling $32.39 million in notional value crossed the tape on Deribit, representing nearly 25% of the total options activity of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,4,5],"class_list":["post-14627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-crypto","tag-doge","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14627\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}