Bitcoin’s derivatives market is being split across more specialized products. Glassnode data shows trading volume in dated bitcoin futures on offshore crypto platforms has fallen about 97% from 2021 levels. At the same time, options have grown from roughly one-quarter to nearly half of open interest in bitcoin derivatives on crypto-native venues, while perpetual contracts have absorbed much of the demand for directional leverage without an expiry date.
The shift is not simply a case of options replacing futures. Functions once concentrated in traditional futures are now distributed across several instruments: perpetuals are suited to maintaining long or short exposure, while options are used for hedging, volatility trading, downside protection and strategies built around specific prices and expiry dates. Dated futures have consequently been pushed toward more specialized use cases.
Bitcoin Options Open Interest Overtook Futures in 2026
The gap between bitcoin options and futures open interest widened several times over the past year. In March 2025, the ratio of bitcoin options open interest to futures open interest rose from 57.8% to 69.6% in less than a week. The equivalent ratio for ether was significantly lower during the same period.
By January 2026, bitcoin options open interest had reached about $74.1 billion, exceeding the roughly $65.22 billion in futures open interest. It was the first time bitcoin options open interest had surpassed futures, indicating that market participants were using options more often to manage price volatility and portfolio risk rather than simply express a bullish or bearish view.
Glassnode’s study of five market phases since 2019 found that options increased their share in four of them, including a prolonged bear-market phase. Options do not require bitcoin to rise in order to be useful. Demand can increase when investors are more focused on limiting losses, trading volatility or reshaping portfolio exposures.
Perpetuals Absorb Linear Leverage
Traditional futures have a defined expiry. A trader who buys a December bitcoin futures contract must close, settle or roll the position before expiry. Perpetual contracts remove that deadline. As long as sufficient margin is maintained, the position can remain open, while periodic funding payments between longs and shorts help keep the contract price aligned with spot bitcoin.
For traders seeking leveraged bitcoin exposure, perpetuals eliminate the need to manage rollovers or choose liquidity between different delivery months. Binance market data from September 18, 2026, illustrates the difference. Open interest in the BTCUSDT perpetual stood at about 108,289 bitcoin, while the BTCUSDC perpetual added roughly 19,465 bitcoin. Based on the respective mark prices, the two contracts represented combined open positions of approximately $9.93 billion.
By comparison, two Binance bitcoin futures contracts margined in dollar stablecoins and expiring on September 25 and December 25, 2026, had combined open interest of about $77 million. At that point, open interest in the two main stablecoin-margined perpetuals was roughly 129 times that of the corresponding quarterly futures.
The figures cover a single exchange at a single point in time and do not represent the entire market. They nevertheless help explain the sharp decline in dated-futures activity on offshore crypto platforms: traders seeking linear leverage already have alternatives with deeper liquidity and lower maintenance costs. Glassnode’s broader data also shows dated-futures activity falling sharply from its 2021 peak, while perpetuals took on a substantial share of the leverage previously handled by futures.
Options Address Portfolio Risk
The composition of bitcoin holders has also changed. Spot bitcoin ETFs provide long-term exposure, corporate treasuries may hold bitcoin on their balance sheets, and funds and market makers manage inventory, liquidity and structured products around the asset. These participants do not always want to buy or sell bitcoin outright. Often, they need to adjust the risk of positions they already hold.
A fund with a large bitcoin position can buy put options to reduce the impact of a price decline while retaining its spot holdings. A holder willing to give up some upside can sell call options to collect premium. Traders expecting substantial volatility but lacking a clear directional view can trade volatility directly instead of simply going long or short.
Options can also affect spot and perpetual markets through market-maker hedging. A market maker that sells an option may need to buy or sell bitcoin or futures as the option’s delta changes. Moves in the underlying price, remaining time to expiry and implied volatility can turn options positions into actual trading demand in spot and derivatives markets.
As a result, $1 of open interest in a perpetual contract does not represent the same risk as $1 of open interest in an option. Perpetual returns are broadly linear, while an option’s outcome depends on its strike price, expiry, implied volatility and bitcoin’s final price.
Stablecoin Margin Reduces Collateral Linkage
The structure of derivatives collateral is changing as well. Earlier crypto derivatives markets often used bitcoin itself as margin. During a market decline, the trading position could lose value while the bitcoin posted as collateral also fell, creating the potential for reinforcing margin pressure.
Glassnode says the market is moving from crypto-denominated margin toward stablecoins and cash-like collateral. Stable-value collateral can reduce the extent to which margin declines alongside bitcoin and makes it easier for professional trading desks to manage risk across spot, futures and options.
Options venues have also become deeper than they were several years ago. In Glassnode’s comparison of four trading platforms, Bybit’s share of tracked bitcoin options volume rose to 28%, from below 10%. Its options open interest increased from $529 million in the first month after launch to $2.33 billion. Over the past 90 days, ether accounted for about one-third of Bybit’s options turnover.
The platform figures come from research conducted by Glassnode and Bybit and should be viewed in light of that sample. Even so, liquidity changes across multiple venues indicate that bitcoin options are no longer concentrated in a single market. Narrower spreads and market makers operating across more exchanges have made options part of the infrastructure used by professional traders.
CME Futures Continue to Serve Institutions
Offshore crypto-platform data does not cover the entire bitcoin futures market. Glassnode’s options comparison mainly covers crypto-native venues, while its futures research focuses on offshore exchanges and explicitly excludes the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, or CME. The data therefore cannot be used to conclude that dated futures are disappearing across all markets.
CME futures serve a different client base and set of use cases. Regulated asset managers, hedge funds, banks and basis traders may prefer standardized CME contracts because they fit existing collateral, clearing, compliance and risk-management systems.
The growth of spot bitcoin ETFs has also increased the relevance of the institutional futures market. Funds can hold spot exposure while selling futures as a hedge. Basis traders may establish opposing positions in spot or ETFs and futures to trade the spread between them. Market makers can also use CME positions to hedge bitcoin risk held elsewhere.
That means short positions held by leveraged funds in Commodity Futures Trading Commission data cannot, on their own, show that market participants are bearish on bitcoin. Basis levels, funding costs and the structure of related trades also need to be considered.
Dated bitcoin futures have not disappeared from every market, but their role is becoming more specialized. Offshore crypto exchanges use perpetuals for continuous directional leverage, options for volatility, downside protection and expiry-related risk, and CME futures provide institutions with a standardized, regulated channel backed by established clearing. Trading demand once concentrated in a single leveraged product is now spread across perpetuals, options, spot markets and regulated futures.