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Citizen Daily Brief

The Onchain Options Casino ($)

Citizen Brief: gm, it was a big week with some big launches, let's take a look at some killer opportunities for crypto traders.
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Feb 13, 20257 min read
The Onchain Options Casino
Published on Feb 13, 2025
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Sponsor: Uphold — Buy, swap & hold 300+ crypto. Capital at risk.

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NEED TO KNOW
Coinbase's Killer Quarter
  1. 🔵 Coinbase's Full-Year Revenue Doubled in 2024. The exchange reported Q4 revenue of $2.3 billion in another blockbuster quarter.
  2. 🎨 Doodles Announces Solana-Based DOOD Token Launch. Another Ethereum NFT Project is launching its token on Solana.
  3. ⚖️ Tether May Rebalance Holdings to Comply with U.S. Rules. Tether may have to sell off bitcoin and stock up on treasuries to comply with newly proposed U.S. stablecoin issuer rules, JP Morgan claims.
📸
Daily Market Snapshot: Crypto's Total Market Cap saw a relatively flat week of trading as traders weighed the long-term impacts of tariffs with a number of bullish regulatory wins for the sector.
Prices as of 6pm ET 24hr 7d
Crypto $3.19T ↘ 1.6% ↗ 0.3%
BTC $96,310 ↘ 1.5% ↘ 0.2%
ETH $2,666 ↘ 3.0% ↘ 1.1%
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CHEAT SHEET
Unichain Discovery

Market Plays:

Hot Reads:

Farming Opps:

Airdrop Hunter:

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DEEP DIVE
Citizen-Only: Onchain Zero-Day Options
Bankless Analyst: Jack Inabinet

All it takes is one day and one bold decision to make life-changing wealth in crypto. While crypto’s casinos have never been for the faint-hearted, degens who come prepared to risk it all can make fortunes in the blink of an eye with zero days to expiration (0DTE) options!

Whether you’re chasing 1,000x leverage without the risk of price-based liquidation or looking to harvest daily income from your cryptocurrency bags, 0DTE options can make for a powerful addition to your trading tool belt.

Welcome to the world of 0DTE crypto options, where literally every second counts, and the only thing that stands between you cashing out and crashing out is one swift market move. 🚀

🧐 Why 0DTE Options?

Like any high-stakes casino, crypto markets provide participants with a number of different games to test their luck and skills.

Although most crypto newbies start out satisfied with the outsized rips and dips experienced by prominent spot tokens – like BTC, ETH, or SOL – many quickly come to realize they’ll need more firepower if they want to break out of the Matrix.

Some speculators soon pivot to longer-tail tokens offering higher return prospects, like memecoins and new token launches. Unfortunately, as insiders control large swaths of token supplies and can manipulate markets on a whim, turning a profit in this arena can feel like playing against a stacked deck where the house has overwhelming odds to win.

Alternatively, perpetual futures (or perps) are widely accessible instruments that allow crypto traders to dial up the return profile of their tokens with leverage.

Shrewd traders can make massive returns by correctly predicting the price movements of a token with highly leveraged perpetual positions, but the drastic price swings experienced by crypto assets often subject even directionally correct positions to liquidation, taking traders out of the market and forcing them to chase the move.

With options, crypto speculators forgo all risks of price-based liquidation by making a one-time payment that gives them the right to buy or sell a token for a fixed price at a future date.

Crypto tokens can have hundreds of listed options at various execution prices across multiple maturity dates, but zero days to expiration options, or options that expire on the same day they are purchased, will always offer traders the biggest bang for their buck.

For example, at the time of this analysis, BTC was trading at $97.5K, and it cost $12K to purchase one $95k BTC put (the right to sell one BTC at $95K) until September 26, 2025. Purchasing these rights until the end of February cost just $2.5K, meanwhile, securing the right to sell at $95K for the remainder of the day cost a meager $60.

While entering into shorter-dated option plays leaves much less time to profit, you must pay extra for the luxury of time. In the example provided above, a sudden (but not entirely unreasonable) 3% or more move down in the price of BTC could allow the 0DTE options trader to experience profits 200x greater than that of a longer-dated September position!

Assuming the “efficient market” has correctly priced an option, it is expected to expire unprofitable for the buyer. Considering this, many long-term crypto investors rightfully question how buying such instruments fits into a sustainable investment strategy.

Thankfully, even risk-averse investors can capitalize on 0DTE option dynamics to generate daily income, all while capping their potential losses with a near-dated expiration date.

Spot crypto holders can effortlessly earn premium payments, particularly in times of market chop, by agreeing to sell their tokens at a set price to 0DTE call option speculators looking to make high-stakes bets on short-term moves.

📊 Your Options for Options

Crypto’s largest centralized exchanges have offered options trading to retail clientele for years, and American stock exchanges are now inundated with options on a number of crypto exchange-traded funds, from spot BTC ETFs like BlackRock’s IBIT to leveraged futures-linked products like Volatility Shares’ ETHU.

While centralized marketplaces require their users to provide personally identifiable information and may prohibit access to individuals from certain nations, crypto-native permissionless options platforms are available in their stead!

Start your onchain 0DTE crypto options journey with these two platforms. 👇

🦁 Derive

Website | Twitter

Formerly known as Lyra Finance, Derive’s impeccable three-year track record has established it as one of the foremost permissionless crypto options protocols!

Anyone seeking to interact with Derive must first bridge ERC20s from Ethereum, Optimism, Arbitrum, or Base Base to the Derive Chain, a semi-permissioned OP Stack rollup implementation that houses the protocol’s underlying derivatives markets and associated smart contracts.

Once onboarded into the Derive L2, users can borrow against non-USDC tokens for portfolio margin, trade risky perpetuals and options products, or deposit assets into automated yield-generating vault strategies that generate income by selling options.

Derive offers options markets for BTC and ETH.

🎀 Aevo

Website | Twitter

Aevo is a decentralized derivatives exchange from the Ribbon Finance team that specializes in options and perps trading.

Built on a bespoke optimistic-style rollup, the exchange combines an offchain order book system with onchain settlements, allowing for the efficient matching of orders while ensuring that trades are executed and settled securely through smart contracts.

The idea? Offer traders the best of both worlds: the speed and flexibility of offchain operations, coupled with the transparency and security of onchain execution. Aevo currently offers options for BTC and ETH.

Disclaimers

Options trading is inherently risky, and while it could be your path to quick crypto gains, it can just as easily implode your account. Learn more about crypto options trading and explore unique offerings and strategies beyond 0DTE by following the link below!

🏴 Getting to Know Your Options on Bankless
A guide to exploring some of the top on-chain options protocols out there.

FRIEND & SPONSOR: UPHOLD

Explore 300+ assets on Uphold. Trade, swap & hold - all in one place. In the US? Earn rewards, including rewards on stablecoins, exclusive insights, and early token access—just by staying active. Terms apply. Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest.

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CITIZEN-ONLY TOKEN RATING
Bearish or Bullish on BERA?
Bankless Analyst: Jack Inabinet

Catalyst Overview:

Berachain’s BERA has plunged by 60% since its February 6 airdrop, when it debuted with an already comparatively brutal $6.6B fully diluted valuation. How are we feeling about its future prospects?

BERA Pros:

  • Refreshed Incentives: Novel PoL incentives provide for enshrined BGT emissions. These can be converted 1:1 into BERA, enhancing yields to attract money-motivated DeFi participants.
  • Governance Greed: Groups that wish to direct Berachain emissions in support of their users must accumulate BGT voting power, potentially reducing emission sell pressure.
  • Attractive Valuation: Berachain’s relatively low valuation compared to leading alt L1s gives BERA plenty of room to run.
  • Lack of Sellers: Initial airdrop sell pressure had likely subsided at the time of this analysis, 5 days out from token generation.

BERA Cons:

  • Insider Emissions: Locked BERA holders (i.e., team and investors) receive BGT emissions, which can be converted into liquid BERA and sold into the market.
  • Lackluster Tech: Berachain makes no technical improvements to existing L1 designs.

Price Impact:

The Bankless Analyst Team is assigning a bullish rating to BERA, cautiously optimistic that its novel incentives structure could trigger a positive-sum deposit flywheel, whereby initial inflows improve network fundamentals to increase the value of BGT incentives to attract more deposits.

For this bull case to materialize, however, Berachain must first give people a reason to want to use the network beyond its ponzinomic token emissions.


See 45+ other active token ratings in the Citizen-only Token Hub 🔥

Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.

Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here.