Options traders poured $100M into Coinbase calls, with 4x more calls bought than puts, as bitcoin hit June highs. Robinhood saw 6x call buys. COIN Alpha Score 21/100.
Coinbase shares jumped 11.3% to $178 Tuesday after trading below $150 earlier this month. The move came as Bitcoin reached its highest level since mid-June, and options traders loaded up on bullish bets across the crypto ecosystem.
More than 114,000 calls traded on COIN versus just under 50,000 puts, according to SpotGamma data. Call contracts accounted for roughly $80 million of the $100 million in options premium that changed hands on the exchange by midday. The most popular single contract was the 190-strike call expiring Friday, which needs a roughly 7.5% rally to pay off.
Buyers dominated the flow: four times as many calls were bought as puts. That pattern repeated at Robinhood Markets, where 125,000 of the 170,000 total contracts were calls, with six calls bought for every put bought, ThinkOrSwim data show.
Bullish positioning extended to the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF and Strategy, the bitcoin treasury company. In the ETF, twice as many calls were bought as puts, though the sell side was also active – more calls were sold than bought, a sign of neutral-to-bullish hedging rather than an outright directional bet. At Strategy, call volume doubled put volume.
Both Coinbase and Robinhood score poorly on AlphaScala's proprietary metric. COIN holds an Alpha Score of 21 out of 100, a weak reading versus sector peers. HOOD scores 40, in the mixed range.
The risk in the setup is time. Most of the call volume targets this week's expiry. If bitcoin fails to hold its gains or slips further, the open interest could unwind quickly, pulling the stocks back toward recent lows. The 190-strike Coinbase call expiring Friday needs a continued rally to pay off, putting bitcoin's next move at the center of the trade.
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