According to Ether active options data, the largest cluster of open contracts is a call option with a strike price of $2,550 that will expire on Friday, January 19th. There are more than 24,600 open contracts for the $2,550 strike price, according to Deribit data. It has a nominal value of over $62 million.
In options trading, a call option gives the holder the right, but not the obligation, to purchase the underlying asset at a specific price before or at the expiration date.
Ether call options are centered at $2,550 ahead of expiration on Friday. Image: Deribit.
The existence of a significant number of call options at $2,550 indicates that a significant portion of traders expected the price of Ether to rise above $2,550 by the mid-January expiration date. However, according to The Block’s pricing page, the price of ether was trading at $2,516, down nearly 1% over the past 24 hours.
The price of ether has fallen by almost 1% in the last 24 hours. Image: Block.
Expectations for Ethereum spot ETF
Ethereum price has fallen over the past 24 hours, but the Ethereum asset has still outperformed Bitcoin in the week since the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved several spot Bitcoin ETFs. Last week, Bitcoin’s value fell about 10%, while Ethereum’s price fell just over 5%. According to Wednesday’s market update: At QCP Capital 
ETH
-0.94%
The /BTC exchange rate rose from 0.05 to 0.06 over the same period. QCP Capital analysts also expect ether to continue to outperform Bitcoin in the medium term as the market narrative shifts towards the possible approval of a spot ether ETF.
Luke Nolan, Ethereum researcher at CoinShares, puts the odds of a spot Ether ETF being approved in 2024 at 70%. “However, it is possible that the market is getting too excited too quickly,” he said. “We believe the fourth quarter of 2024 would be the earliest time for approval and it is unlikely to happen before then.” block it.
YouHodler Market Director Ruslan Lienkha is aware of the obstacles that could prevent the approval of a spot ether ETF this year. “The SEC will try to find some argument to reject the filing. In this case, Ethereum is much more centralized than Bitcoin, so it has more similarities to securities, and the SEC knows this. But I think ETH “I think it will continue to be correlated with Bitcoin. In the long term, BTC may temporarily outperform due to all the speculative sentiment around the possibility of ETF approval,” Lienkha told The Block.
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