IBIT Options Skew Defensive as Bitcoin Drifts Higher; XRP Perp Funding Deepens Negative

Spot bitcoin held a 1.2% gain to $60,827 through Saturday's midday tape, but the more telling print came from the options chain: BlackRock's IBIT registered a put/call volume ratio of 1.99 against an open-interest ratio of 0.83, a divergence that suggests fresh defensive flow layering onto a structurally call-heavy book.

Market Pulse

Majors traded firmer but rangebound through the morning. Bitcoin held the $60,800 handle with a 1.34% session range, ether reclaimed $1,605 on a 2.19% range, and XRP led the screen at +2.5%. Funding tells a split story: Binance perpetual funding sits at +4.1% annualized on BTC and +1.9% on ETH — a tepid long bid — while SOL prints -2.1% and XRP runs -15.8% annualized. The XRP funding gap against a +2.5% spot move is consistent with short pressure absorbing the rally rather than fresh leveraged longs driving it.

Options Positioning

The IBIT chain is the standout. Put/call volume of 1.99 against open-interest ratio of 0.83 points to defensive day-trader flow stacking onto a still-bullish standing book — top call OI clusters at the $45 and $140 strikes, while the largest put concentration sits at $33 (OI 65,076) against an underlying at $33.97. That's at-the-money put accumulation. ETHA tells a similar story: P/C volume 1.86, IV30 at 54.9%, and the $10 put strike carries 67,901 contracts versus an $11.90 underlying. FBTC and ARKB show the opposite tilt — P/C OI of 0.52 and 0.21 respectively — suggesting the hedging flow is concentrated in the two largest-AUM products, not sector-wide. XRPC's chain remains thin but call-skewed (P/C vol 0.23), with the $22 strike anchoring upside positioning.

Narrative

The tape is digesting two competing structural reads. Bitcoin trading below its 200-week moving average — historically a zone associated with accumulation rather than capitulation — is colliding with persistent supply-overhang commentary and a high-profile dismissal from Jeremy Grantham. Separately, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse's public criticism of Michael Saylor's bitcoin strategy added a sentiment crosscurrent that may help explain XRP's relative outperformance on the session. Ethereum's narrative is heavier: oldest-wallet selling into the $1,500 zone and renewed debate over diverting staking rewards to public-goods funding are weighing on the protocol layer even as ETHA holds bid.

Afternoon Watch

IBIT and ETHA P/C volume prints into the close — a sustained reading above 1.5 has historically been associated with hedging cycles that extend into the following session.
XRP perpetual funding refresh at the next 8h mark — current -15.8% annualized is among the deeper readings of the month.
USDT supply contracted $1.16B over 24h against USDC's +$142M; the divergence is worth tracking for offshore-vs-onshore staging signal.