BlackRock’s IBIT flips Deribit for bitcoin options trading
Bitcoin ETFs are having a strong start to the week, with $522 million in inflows on Monday.
Bitcoin ETFs saw $521.95 million in inflows on Monday, with Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund taking the lion’s share, recording $298.7 million in inflows, according to SoSoValue data. Total net assets across all bitcoin ETFs now sit at an eye-popping $150.4 billion, representing 6.6% of the total bitcoin market cap.
In another sign of bitcoin’s increasing institutionalization, Bloomberg reported that BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust flipped crypto options platform Deribit (which Coinbase acquired for $2.9 billion in May) as the top bitcoin options venue.
“Open interest in options tied to the Nasdaq-listed IBIT stood at nearly $38 billion compared with $32 billion on Deribit, after Friday’s expiry of the contracts,” Bloomberg reported.
This feat comes less than a year after Nasdaq listed options on IBIT, the most successful bitcoin ETF, with $87 billion in assets under management. This represents 3.85% of the total bitcoin market cap and 72% of total bitcoin ETF assets under management.
IBIT owning 3.8% of all the bitcoin is bonkers if you think about it. An equity ETF would need to have $2.2 trillion in assets to have as much ownership of its underlying asset class. eg $SPY owns 1.1% of most stocks and it's 32yrs old, IBIT is still a toddler. https://t.co/tgQ6bZxyWB
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) September 30, 2025
The Bitcoin Checkpoint report, from Checkonchain and Unchained, underscored that options are “now the dominant derivatives instrument by open interest, being over $90 billion in size, and eclipsing the futures markets at $80 billion,” noting that “volatility capture and premium arbitrage strategies are having an ever-growing influence on both the ETF and spot markets.”
Lucas Kiely, founder and CEO of Future Digital Capital Management, told Sherwood News that bitcoin is increasingly becoming the digital asset of choice for institutions, which are looking to diversify beyond traditional asset classes.
“This shift has been happening for some time, but now it’s clear that the big financial players are the ones moving the market,” he said.
In other bitcoin news:
Lookonchain reported that a dormant wallet with 400 bitcoin awoke after 12 years, moving its holdings to multiple new wallets. The bitcoin are now worth well over $44 million, a huge rise from September 2013, when one bitcoin was worth about $130, per Bitbo.
In the UK, a long-standing case came to a close when a woman pleaded guilty to acquiring and possessing criminal property, resulting in the seizure of 61,000 bitcoin worth roughly $7 billion. The Met Police said this was “the single largest cryptocurrency seizure in the world.” The woman defrauded 128,000 Chinese individuals and turned the proceeds into bitcoin.
