Deribit's Options Market for Solana's SOL Token Becomes Active as Whales Engage in Bearish Bets

Deribit's options market for Solana's SOL token has become active, with whales engaging in bearish bets as the token's price continues to decline

Solana (SOL) options traders are showing a strong preference for bearish bets as the token's price continues to slide ahead of an impending multi-billion dollar unlock.

According to Amberdata, block trades totaling $32.39 million in notional SOL options value crossed the tape on Deribit last week. This represents nearly 25% of the total options activity of $130.74 million on the platform during the same period. The remaining activity, known as screen trades, were much lower at $98.35 million.

This marks the second-highest proportion of block trades to total activity on record. In the previous week, there were almost no block trades in SOL options on Deribit.

A "block trade" in options refers to a significant, privately negotiated options transaction between two parties involving a large number of contracts. Such trades, typically associated with whale activity, are executed over-the-counter and outside the regular order book and then booked on the exchange, allowing for a minimal impact on the market prices.

Options are derivative contracts that give the purchaser the right but not the obligation to buy or sell the underlying asset, in this case, SOL, at a preset price on or before a specific date. A call option gives the right to buy, while a put option provides the right to sell. On Deribit, which accounts for over 85% of the global crypto options activity, one options contract represents 1 SOL.

Last week's spike in SOL block trades featured a preference for put options, which traders use to hedge against or profit from a potential price slide.

"Nearly 80% of the block-trade volume was concentrated in put contracts. Compared to only 40% puts for BTC and 37.5% puts for ETH during the same timeframe," said Greg Magadini, director of derivatives at Amberdata.

The whale demand for put options comes as SOL's outlook appears grim following the 46% price slide to $160 in just over five weeks. The activity on the Solana blockchain, which became a go-to-place for memecoin traders last year, peaked with the launch of the TRUMP token on Jan. 17, three days before Donald Trump was inaugurated as the President of the U.S.

Since then, the number of daily transactions on Solana and the cumulative daily volume on the Solana-based decentralized exchanges has declined significantly, according to data source Artemis. That has weakened the bullish case for SOL.

Plus, the impending SOL token unlock on Jan. 1 presents a significant headwind, per Deribit's Asia Business Development Head Lin Chen.

"Solana SOLUSD will have a major token unlock event on March 1, releasing 11.2 million SOL tokens, valued at approximately $2.07 billion. This represents 2.29% of the total supply. A significant portion of the unlock comes from the FTX estate and a foundation sale," said Chen.

According to Deribit data, SOL options activity is also interesting with a lot of hedging flow observed in anticipation of the token unlock.

"We can see that a large part of the tokens will flow into the market, and this volume of tokens is nearly 59% of SOL's daily spot trading volume. Hence, it's natural to see a lot of hedging flow in put options,” explained Chen.

"Many traders would also take this opportunity to long Vol[atility] to generate good yield," he added.