Bitcoin options traders are firmly positioned for downside protection across both crypto-native and institutional markets, according to new research from Anchorage Digital head of research David Lawant, with defensive positioning ranking in historically elevated percentiles on every platform examined.
Elevated Put Skew Across Deribit and IBIT
Anchorage analyzed options activity across three markets: Deribit, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), and Strategy (MSTR). The firm said examining all three together gives a broader read of crypto-native, institutional, and retail sentiment than any single market can provide.
Both Deribit and IBIT showed elevated put skew, meaning traders are paying a premium for downside protection rather than betting on further gains. The report placed defensive positioning at the 82nd percentile of IBIT’s historical range and the 84th percentile of Deribit’s five-year history.
Anchorage also identified an unusual inversion in Bitcoin’s implied volatility term structure. Options markets have spent nearly half of 2026 pricing one-week implied volatility above one-month implied volatility, a pattern that has historically been short-lived. Lawant attributed the persistence to a succession of macroeconomic, geopolitical, and crypto-specific catalysts keeping traders locked on near-term risks.
Lawant said he is watching for one-month implied volatility to once again exceed one-week implied volatility, a shift he described as a signal that markets are becoming comfortable looking beyond immediate risks.
Options Market Not Signaling a Strategy Crisis
Despite sharp declines in Strategy’s equity instruments, Anchorage concluded that options pricing does not reflect a severe downside scenario for the company.
Strategy’s perpetual preferred stock, STRC, fell as low as $82.53 on June 22, roughly 17% below its $100 par value, before partially recovering after the company disclosed it had raised its fiat reserves to $1.3 billion. As of Thursday, STRC was trading around $77, approximately 23% below par.
Strategy’s common shares, MSTR, were down around 78% over the past year, trading near $87 on Thursday according to Yahoo Finance data.
Despite that sell-off, Anchorage found that put skew on MSTR options has not reached the levels typically associated with fears of forced deleveraging or broader corporate distress, placing current stress well below previous market correction highs.
Strategy, led by Executive Chairman Michael Saylor, pioneered the corporate Bitcoin treasury model in 2020 and holds 847,363 BTC on its balance sheet, making it the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin holder.
What Traders Are Watching
Taken together, the Anchorage findings paint a picture of a market managing near-term risk rather than making a directional call. The firm’s key signal to watch is a normalization of the volatility term structure, where longer-dated implied volatility returns to trading above shorter-dated implied volatility, as a sign that traders are pricing in greater stability ahead.
