Options: crypto option chains, volatility and open interest

Options shows the crypto option markets of Deribit, OKX, Bybit and Binance in one window: each expiry's chain, every contract's prices and Greeks, the volatility the options price in and where open interest sits. It is part of the Pro and Elite plans.

Opening it

1. Press Options in the top toolbar, next to Orderflow. On a phone, open the analysis centre from the bottom bar and choose Options.
2. The coin on your chart opens first when it has options, otherwise BTC. Pick another coin at the top; beside the coins are the exchanges that list the one you picked.
3. Switch between Chain, Volatility and Open interest with the tabs. The Flow tab shows the day's volume and live trades.

Exchanges and coins

• Deribit: BTC and ETH, settled in the coin; SOL, XRP, HYPE, AVAX and TRX, settled in USDC.
• OKX: BTC and ETH, settled in the coin.
• Bybit: BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, DOGE and MNT, settled in USDT.
• Binance: BTC, ETH, BNB, SOL, XRP and DOGE, settled in USDT.

On all four exchanges, options expire at 08:00 UTC on their expiry date. The line at the bottom of the window says how the book you are looking at settles.

The summary row

Eight figures above the tabs sum up the coin on the chosen exchange: the index price, at-the-money implied volatility, the 25-delta risk reversal, the expected move, open interest in US dollars, the put/call ratio, 24-hour volume and max pain. Volatility, risk reversal, expected move and max pain come from the nearest expiry at least a day away; open interest, the put/call ratio and volume add up every expiry. On a phone, only the first four figures are shown.

The chain

• Pick an expiry from the row of dates; each date shows the time left and its at-the-money volatility.
• Calls are on the left, puts on the right and strikes in the middle. The line across the table marks the forward price, and the strike closest to it is highlighted.
• Each side shows open interest in coins, 24-hour volume, implied volatility at the mark, delta, bid and ask. Shaded cells are in the money. On a phone, open interest, volume and delta are left out to fit the screen.
• On a computer, show 10 or 20 strikes on each side of the forward, or all of them; a phone shows 10.

The contract panel

Click or tap any contract in the chain to open its panel.

• Bid, mark and ask, each with its implied volatility.
• Delta, gamma, vega per volatility point and theta per day.
• The break-even price and how far it is from the forward, open interest, 24-hour volume and the forward itself.
• A profit and loss chart for buying at the mark, in US dollars per coin: at expiry, and today at the mark volatility.

Volatility

• Volatility smile: implied volatility at the mark across strikes, read from puts below the forward and calls above it. Compare up to four expiries; it starts with those about a day, a week, a month and three months away.
• Term structure: at-the-money volatility by days to expiry, from the nearest expiry to the furthest.
• By expiry: each expiry's forward, at-the-money volatility, 25-delta risk reversal and butterfly, and expected move, which is the price of the at-the-money straddle. A risk reversal above zero means calls cost more than puts.
• DVOL: for BTC and ETH, Deribit's 30-day implied volatility index over the last 30 days, 90 days or year.
• Volatility surface: the mark volatility of each expiry at strikes from 80% to 120% of the forward, tinted from low to high; 100% is at the money.

Open interest

• Open interest by strike: calls and puts at every strike, for one expiry or all expiries, with the forward and max pain marked.
• Open interest by expiry: calls and puts for each expiry in coins, and a table of each expiry's put/call ratio, max pain and notional value in US dollars.
• Max pain is the settlement price at which the open contracts pay their holders least. The put/call ratio divides open puts by open calls.

Flow

• Last 24 hours: the calls and puts traded on the selected exchange, in coins and dollars, the put/call volume ratio, the volume of each expiry and the busiest contracts.
• Live option trades on Bybit and OKX: each trade's contract, side, size, premium and volatility, with the net call and put premium over the last hour or four. They come straight from the exchange's public stream while the tab is open; Deribit's and Binance's trades cannot be streamed to the browser, so those two show a switch to Bybit or OKX.
• Net premium is what buyers paid minus what sellers received: above zero, takers were mostly buying.

How prices and Greeks are worked out

• Prices are in US dollars per coin. Deribit's BTC and ETH options and OKX's options are quoted in the coin, so each price is multiplied by the forward the exchange uses for that contract. USDC and USDT options are shown as quoted.
• Greeks come from the Black-76 model on each exchange's own forward, the same way for every exchange, so a delta from one exchange can be compared with another's. Binance publishes no forward, so its index carried forward at Binance's own interest rate is used instead.
• Implied volatilities are each exchange's own. Deribit publishes only the mark's, so the bid's and ask's are worked out from their prices.
• The data refreshes every 15 seconds while the window is open and on screen, and the refresh button reads it again at once. If an exchange does not answer for a moment, the last chain stays on screen; on a computer, the top of the window shows when it was updated.

A contract on the chart

Any single contract can also be opened as a chart of its own: find it under the Options tab in symbol search, or choose Open chart on a contract in the chain.

Good to know

To see the main option levels on your price chart, add Options Levels from Alerta Chain Lab in the order-flow toolbox. Options data is for information only and is not investment advice.