Block Scholes x Bybit Crypto Derivatives April 25 2025

Key insights

At the start of the week, Bitcoin began to show signs of decoupling from its relationship with US equities. However, following US president Donald Trump's positive comments regarding the US’s ongoing trade war with China (which saw tariffs of 145% imposed on Chinese goods entering the US), a relief rally has gripped markets across asset classes. In turn, BTC has once more been moving up alongside US equities. With that spot move, implied volatility at 7-day and 14-day tenors has jumped by 12 points, and BTC’s put-call skew has recovered at short tenors by more than 5%, a sign that traders are indeed looking for upside exposure to the rally.

‍

Perpetuals: BTC funding rates have remained positive, whereas funding rates for ETH have continued to fluctuate between positive and negative, despite a 12% rally in spot this week.

‍

Options: BTC’s term structure has flattened as volatility at the front end picked up from historically low levels, while ETH’s term structure has once again inverted from its brief flat shape.

‍

Block Scholes BTC Senti-Meter Index

Block Scholes ETH Senti-Meter Index

‍

Block Scholes’s Senti-Meter Index aggregates the funding rate, future-implied yield and volatility smile skew into a single expression of sentiment in derivatives markets. See more in the methodology article here.

Macro, tech & regs

Macro calendar & recent events

• Euro area consumer confidence flash estimate — Apr 22, 2025 — The consumer confidence indicator in April fell for a second month in a row to −16.7, its lowest level in 18 months.

‍

• US Richmond Fed Manufacturing Index — Apr 22, 2025 — Manufacturing activity slowed further in April, according to the Richmond Fed’s survey. The composite manufacturing index fell to −13 in April 2025, its lowest value this year, down from −4 in March.

‍

• Japan Tokyo CPI — Apr 25, 2025 — Headline year-over-year (YoY) CPI is expected to increase in Japan’s capital, from 2.9% in March to 3.3% in April. March is expected to show a YoY increase of 2.2%, down from 2.3% in February, ahead of the BoJ’s monetary policy meeting on Apr 30, 2025.

‍

• Canada retail sales — Apr 25, 2025 — MoM retail sales for February are expected to fall 0.4%, after a -0.6% decline in January.

‍

• University of Michigan survey of consumers — Apr 25, 2025 — Short-term inflation expectations are expected to increase to 6.7%, the highest level since November 1981, up from 5% in March.

Weaker US dollar, stronger Bitcoin — Since President Trump announced (and subsequently) paused his “Liberation Day” tariffs on Apr 2, 2025, BTC’s price has increased by 9%. Meanwhile, the DXY, a measure of the US dollar against a basket of the world’s major currencies, is down by 4%.

Trending news

• Cantor Fitzgerald, SoftBank, Tether and Bitfinex are partnering to launch 21 Capital, a Bitcoin investment vehicle that will be seeded with $3B worth of Bitcoin ($1.5B from Tether, $900M from SoftBank and $600M from Bitfinex). The investment vehicle also plans to raise $350M via a convertible bond offering to purchase additional Bitcoin.
• Upexi Inc., a consumer-goods company, is raising $100M to accumulate and stake SOL tokens.

Perpetual swaps open interest climbs

Key insights

President Trump set off a rally across risk-on US equities by stating that tariffs on China will “come down substantially,” quelling fears that he may attempt to dismiss Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Bitcoin, which had been rallying even before these comments, subsequently began to move up alongside US equities. In addition, perp open interest has increased noticeably (by 20%) since the beginning of the week across a broad range of tokens, particularly ETH. Perp trading volumes also increased (hitting a high close to $18B), though not to levels seen during the spot price sell off of Apr 7th, 2025. That date saw the highest total trade volume for the month, as President Trump told reporters “forget markets for a second, we have all the advantages.”

‍

BYBIT PERP OPEN INTEREST — Open interest continues to increase in correlation with price levels.

BYBIT PERP TRADING VOLUMES — Increased alongside the spot price rally, but remained considerably lower than volumes seen during recent spot-price sell-offs.

Altcoin funding rates are on the rise

Despite the crypto rally being broad-based across a variety of tokens towards the end of the period, funding rates earlier in the week had shown a more mixed picture. Funding rates for BTC, XRP, DOGE, TON and ADA are now positive and rising, a sign that traders are willing to back the relief rally — at least in the short term. However, despite ETH spot price rallying 12% this week and other measures of sentiment (such as the put-call skew) showing evidence of bullish positioning, perp markets aren’t sharing that sentiment. Funding rates for SOL have more recently ticked up following a sustained period of negative rates over the past week. Funding rates for SOL have more recently ticked up following a sustained period of negative rates over the week.

‍

BTC options

Key insights

President Trump’s most recent signaling of a willingness to negotiate a trade deal with China’s President Xi has set off a relief rally across asset classes, including crypto. BTC, however, had been rallying this week even before Trump’s comments, with its spot price up 7% since Apr 21, 2025. Despite the rally, open interest in puts has been stronger than in calls, and options volume has been relatively balanced.

It’s not clear whether the demand for puts is a sign that traders are protecting themselves against downside moves, or directionally fading the move upward. Additionally, funding rates in perps don’t tell us too much in terms of sentiment, either. However, the put-call skew, another measure of market sentiment, has recovered by more than 5 points at short tenors — a sign that traders are indeed looking for upside exposure to the rally — and willing to pay for it, too.

‍

BYBIT BTC OPTIONS VOLUMES

BYBIT BTC OPTIONS OPEN INTEREST

Can’t keep a good volatility down

BYBIT BTC ATM TERM STRUCTURE — The recent relief rally that pushed BTC’s price back above $90K has flattened the term structure from its previously steep shape.

‍

BYBIT BTC SVI ATM IMPLIED VOLATILITY — After briefly trading close to historically low levels, front-end implied volatility has now begun to spike again.

BYBIT BTC IMPLIED AND REALIZED VOLATILITY — Realized volatility has fallen from its highs of 80%, but hasn’t been followed by a fall in implied volatility, which is rising again.

ETH options

Key insights

ETH’s response to the latest crypto market recovery rally has been a divergence from what we’ve typically seen in this cycle. Not only has ETH outperformed BTC in spot — something it has often failed to do so in recent rallies — but open interest in calls is also higher than in puts, the opposite of what we’re seeing with BTC. In addition, ETH open interest for calls is nearly twice that of puts, and calls have dominated options volumes, too. This could suggest that traders are expecting ETH will pare back some of its relatively large and persistent underperformance again — not just BTC, but other so-called “ETH killers” (such as SUI and SOL). The spot rally has also resulted in another term structure inversion for ETH.

‍

BYBIT ETH OPTIONS VOLUMES

BYBIT ETH OPTIONS OPEN INTEREST

A small inversion in ETH

BYBIT ETH VOLATILITY TERM STRUCTURE — The brief flattening in the term structure was exactly that — brief. Meanwhile, front-end volatility is once again trading at a premium.

BYBIT ETH SVI ATM IMPLIED VOLATILITY — Implied volatility levels are currently much lower than levels seen in previous term structure inversions.

BYBIT ETH IMPLIED AND REALIZED VOLATILITY — Realized volatility has plunged below implied volatility, after a sustained period of values above 100% in early April.

SOL options

Though Solana is up 20% so far this week, it remains considerably below its January all-time high of $293. Open interest in Solana options remains dominated by calls — as it has been for the past month of rocky spot moves. This open interest is also particularly rooted in later expirations. However, there’s been a significant rise in open interest for puts during the recovery rally (from below $2B to nearly $3.8B), echoing the behavior of BTC options markets to some extent. In comparison to last week, options volumes are once again dominated by calls. Unlike ETH or BTC, SOL’s term structure remains positively sloped, with a significant premium attached to its volatility — as expected for an altcoin like SOL.

SOL volatility lower

BYBIT SOL VOLATILITY TERM STRUCTURE — SOL’s term structure has steepened since last week, with front-end volatility 6 points below longer tenors.

BYBIT ETH SVI ATM IMPLIED VOLATILITY — While implied volatility for SOL has bounced off its local bottom of 75%, it remains considerably lower than levels seen in March 2025.

BYBIT ETH IMPLIED AND REALIZED VOLATILITY — Realized volatility in SOL is matching the trend in BTC and ETH. However, unlike those tokens, implied volatility for SOL has remained steady.

Volatility by exchange

BTC, 1-MONTH TENOR, SVI CALIBRATION

ETH, 1-MONTH TENOR, SVI CALIBRATION

Bybit volatility surface

Constant maturity smile

Data & Methodology

Data Acquisition, Composition & Timeline

Open interest and trading volume data are sourced “as is” from the Bybit exchange platform API exclusively, and as such do not represent a comprehensive picture of the sum of trading activity across all derivatives markets or exchanges. The data visualized in this report consists of hourly and daily snapshots, recorded over the previous 30 days. Daily (hourly) snapshots of trade volume record the total sum of the notional value of trades recorded in the 24H (1 hour) period, beginning with the snapshot timestamp.

‍

If not explicitly labeled as derived from another exchange, the input instrument prices to all derivatives analytics metrics in this report are sourced from the appropriate endpoints of Bybit’s public exchange platform API. In the event that data is labeled or referred to as representing the market on another exchange source, that data is sourced from the appropriate endpoint of each respective exchange’s public API.

‍

Macroeconomic charts and data are sourced “as is” from the Bloomberg Terminal. Exchange data is sourced “as is” from publicly available exchange APIs. Block Scholes makes no claims about the veracity of public third-party data.

‍

Open Interest & Volume Dollar Denomination

After acquisition of underlying-denominated raw data for open interest and trading volume on the Bybit exchange platform from Bybit’s API endpoint, equivalent dollar-denominated figures are calculated using the concurrent value of Block Scholes’s Spot Index for the relevant underlying asset.

Block Scholes’s Spot Index represents the aggregate Spot mid-price for a given currency across the top five CEXs by volume (with USD-quoted markets). It considers the proportion of total volume in the instrument on the exchange, as well as the deviation of a data point from those on other exchanges.

‍

Block Scholes–Derived Analytics Metrics

Futures prices are used for Block Scholes’s futures-implied yields calculation services in order to derive the constant-tenor annualized yields displayed in the Futures section of this report.

‍

Options prices are used for Block Scholes’s implied volatility calculation services in order to calibrate volatility surfaces, from which all derivatives volatility analytics displayed in the BTC Options and ETH Options sections of this report are calculated. Volatility smiles are constructed by calibrating to mid-market prices observed in Bybit options markets. As part of the calibration process, prices go through rigorous filtration and cleaning steps, which ensures that the resulting volatility surface is arbitrage-free and has exceptional fit to the market observables.