APE Traders Make Bold Moves in PowerTrade’s Altcoin Options Market

As a seasoned crypto investor with a knack for recognizing promising opportunities, I find the recent surge in APE call options on PowerTrade quite intriguing. Having navigated through numerous market cycles and witnessed the rise and fall of many altcoins, I can’t help but feel a sense of anticipation.

The APE token, which plays a crucial role in governing the APE ecosystem and serves as its utility token, has seen a significant surge in value, nearly doubling to reach $1.50 from the weekend’s levels. This upward trend is helping drive the overall market upward.

On PowerTrade, a platform specializing in derivative contracts for alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins), the surge in options activity implies a continued robust bullish trend may continue over the near future.

In a single day, the number of active APE options contracts, as reported by PowerTrade, skyrocketed more than eightfold to reach approximately 263,000 with a total value of $394.5K, according to CoinDesk’s latest report. It was also disclosed that around 80% of these contracts are call options, which provide an advantageous upside potential for the underlying asset. Essentially, those purchasing call options are expressing optimism towards the asset in question.

As a crypto investor, I’ve noticed that most of the action revolves around the October 22nd and October 25th expiration contracts. Surprisingly, traders are purchasing higher strike out-of-the-money (OTM) calls, some even at prices as high as $2.2, which is nearly 50% more than the current market value of APE.

It’s worth mentioning that the activity in APE options is significant, given its market cap is only $1 billion. This indicates a developing level of complexity within the altcoin sector. However, it’s important to note that open interest and volume are significantly lower compared to the billions of dollars tied up in BTC and ETH options contracts on Deribit, the leading exchange.

The bullish expectations likely stem from the Apechain mainnet launch and LayerZero’s integration.

PowerTrade provides US Dollar-denominated options based on the European style, where each contract equates to 1 APE share. The platform introduced the Request-for-Quote (RFQ) system for options trading in late 2022, facilitating the execution of complex multi-leg strategies as a unified instrument.

On Monday, the trading platform reached an unprecedented level of $50 million in options trades associated with 44 different altcoins. Furthermore, they are intending to introduce options for several other altcoins such as EIGEN, APT, ARK, and PYTH.