The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has clarified its position regarding Bitcoin (BTC)-linked exchange-traded funds. According to a Feb. 12 report by the Australian Financial Review, the commission addressed the subject after previously rejecting a Bitcoin ETF initiative by local company Cosmos Capital. Per the report, Cosmos CEO James Manning claimed that ASIC “have a policy — which they have not released — which says they do not want an exchange traded product, an MIS, listed on an exchange.” However, ASIC commissioner Cathie Armour told the Senate select committee on financial technology Friday that a Bitcoin ETF is possible, so …

Litecoin (LTC) might be 60% below its December 2017 all-time high at $420, but that hasn't stopped its futures contracts open interest from reaching a record $584 million. This makes LTC the seventh-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization and it ranks third in derivatives, behind Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH). As shown above, LTC futures aggregate open interest increased by 285% over the past three months. One should keep in mind that such an event is not necessarily positive since futures contracts require both a buyer (long) and a seller (short). Nevertheless, this increasing interest allows even more substantial players to …

Today Bitcoin (BTC) price rallied to a new all-time high at $44,900 shortly after Tesla announced a $1.5 billion investment. This event triggered $555 million worth of shorts to be liquidated in two hours and it happened as Bitcoin futures open interest reached $13.7 billion, which is just 3% below its historical high. These price moves drastically increased the cost of carrying long positions, mainly for those using perpetual futures. This indicator raised a yellow flag on how leveraged those investors are and their potential price impact. As shown adove, the aggregate BTC futures open interest just reached a $15 …

The Anon Powered development team has announced today the launch of Premia, the latest decentralized finance (DeFi) options platform live on Ethereum. In an interview with Cointelegraph, the group of semi-anonymous developers behind Anon Powered — who collectively requested that they be referred to as “members of the Premia Republic,” the name for Premia’s forthcoming DAO — said that out of the gate users will be able to write, sell and exercise “American-style covered calls and puts,” which can be exercised prior to the option expiration date. Premia’s launch adds to an increasingly crowded DeFi options marketplace, joining projects such …

Ether’s (ETH) $10,000 Dec. 31 call options recently came under the spotlight after surpassing $15.2 million in open interest (8,400 contracts). These instruments give the buyer the right to acquire Ether at a future date for a fixed price and the seller is obliged to honor it. For this right, the buyer pays an upfront fee (premium) to the call option seller. For this reason, call options are deemed neutral-to-bullish as they give its buyer the possibility of high leverage with a little upfront investment. This ‘right’ is currently being traded for $263, equivalent to 14% of the underlying Dec. …

Ether (ETH) price has rallied by 33% over the last five days and data shows that as this occurred some buyers began to use excessive leverage. Although this is not necessarily negative, it should be considered a yellow flag as a higher premium on futures contracts for short periods is normal. Although Ether’s upward movement has been going for an extended period, it was only in February that Ether finally broke the $1,500 psychological barrier and entered price discovery mode. To assess whether the market is overly optimistic, there are a few essential derivatives metrics to review. One is the …

A growing number of options traders are sitting on large unrealized losses following Ether’s (ETH) latest price surge, highlighting once again the volatile, unpredictable nature of the cryptocurrency market. Pankaj Balani, CEO of Delta Exchange — a St. Vincent-based cryptocurrency derivatives platform — told Cointelegraph that he has observed “a lot of naked call writing activity in ETH for deep out of the money call options all the way up to $2,000 and $3,000 strikes.” A call option becomes deep out of the money if its strike price is significantly above the current price of an underlying asset — in …

After bouncing from the recent short-term low, Bitcoin (BTC) price posted a 15% gain over three days as it climbed from $32,400 to $37,200. This was an impressive move given that BTC price had been trading in a sideways range for weeks and regardless of the reasons behind the surge, one would expect large traders and arbitrage desks to follow the trend. Interestingly, this is not the case as many of the top traders opened short positions as BTC commenced its 15% move. Even if a trader lacks confidence in a potential retest of the $42,000 all-time high, opening shorts …

Finance Redefined is Cointelegraph's weekly DeFi-centric newsletter, delivered to subscribers every Wednesday. The end of January saw a string of interesting announcements from projects building innovative products that may well push DeFi forward. And more price gains of course. To briefly touch on the market side of things, this does feel like a much quieter rally than three years ago. Most things are going up, with some DeFi projects being particularly lucky, but it’s nowhere close to the insane gains we saw early in 2018. Although Dogecoin did set a new all-time high, so there’s that. Still, the crypto market …

On Feb. 5, a total of $1 billion in Bitcoin (BTC) options open interest is set to expire. This number is small relative to the past month's $4 billion options expiry, but monthly and quarterly options typically concentrate the most volume. Friday's expiry is somewhat unusual although it is balanced at the current BTC levels. Data also shows that bulls have many incentives to push up the price above $38,000. Deribit exchange holds 84% market share for Friday's expiry. By analyzing the aggregate open interest between $28,000 and $43,000, there are $300 million worth of neutral-to-bullish call options stacked against …

Another Canadian company has filed an application for a Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund, or ETF, amid a renewed interest in crypto ETFs from global financial firms. Accelerate Financial Technologies has filed and obtained a receipt for a preliminary prospectus with Canadian securities regulators for the Accelerate Bitcoin ETF (ABTC). Announcing the news on Feb. 3, Accelerate Financial said that ABTC will offer units denominated in both United States and Canadian dollars. The company has applied to list ABTC units on the Toronto Stock Exchange, with listing being subject to the exchange's requirements. “The TSX has not conditionally approved ABTC's listing …

The price of Ether (ETH), the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain network, achieved a new all-time high of $1,500 today. Data suggests that the ETH options market showed dominant call activity, and this may be a primary factor in the rally to a new high. Across major exchanges, the price of ETH surpassed $1,500 after the options market showed dominant call activity. In the options market, there are two types of contracts: puts and calls. Puts are sell orders, and calls are buy orders. When there are more calls in the market, it means the options market is bullish. …