Institutions Snap Up Ether $5K Call, Bitcoin Risks Double Top as RBA Official Warns of FOMO Meltdown

Institutions Snap Up Ether $5K Call, Bitcoin Risks Double Top as RBA Official Warns of FOMO Meltdown

Bullish flows have returned to ether’s options market, with institutions purchasing higher strike or out-of-the-money call options. However, bitcoin, the top cryptocurrency by market value, is looking choppy amid sour forecasts made by an Australian central bank official.

“We saw institutional buying in call options at $5,000 and $6,500 strike call options over the past two days,” Patrick Chu, director of institutional sales and trading at crypto over-the-counter (OTC) trading firm Paradigm, told CoinDesk in a Telegram channel. “In the past 24 hours, nearly 80% of the flow on our platform has been for calls.”

A call option gives the purchaser the right but not the obligation to buy the underlying asset at a predetermined price on or before a specific date. A call buyer is implicitly bullish on the market. Sophisticated traders often use call and put (bearish bets) options to hedges against long/short positions in the spot and futures markets.