As Deribit's head of business development in Asia noted, most of them are covered options.
Updated March 4, 2025, 1:10 pm UTC Published March 4, 2025, 1:09 pm UTC
What you need to know:
- Despite the decline in XRP value, the $5 call option remains the most popular bet on Deribit.
- Most of these will likely be covered calls rather than outright bullish bets.
Payments cryptocurrency XRP peaked at $3.40 in January but has since fallen 30% to $2.40.
Despite this decline, the $5 call option continues to be the most popular bet on Deribit, giving buyers significant upside if the price breaks above that level. However, this does not necessarily indicate an overtly bullish sentiment among traders.
At the time of writing, the $5 call is the most popular strike, with a notional open interest of $3.84 million — the highest of any XRP strike on the platform, according to Deribit Metrics. Notional open interest represents the dollar value of all active options contracts at any given time. On Deribit, one option contract is worth one XRP.
“Most of them are covered calls,” Lin Chen, Deribit’s head of business development in Asia, told CoinDesk. This explains the significant increase in open interest in these out-of-the-money (OTM) calls.
A covered call strategy involves selling higher-tier OTM calls while holding the underlying asset — in this case, XRP. This approach allows traders to lock in the premium from selling or writing the call while limiting potential losses from an unexpected market rally.
This strategy not only generates additional profits on top of existing assets, but is also popular in both traditional markets and in Bitcoin and Ethereum trading.
