Options Consumption Graphs

Sunday, 28 October, Year 4 d.Tr. | Author: Mircea Popescu

For all graphs, in blue the sum of CALL contracts sold by the MPOE bot (and thus bought by the general public) and PUT contracts bought by the MPOE bot (and thus sold by the general public) whereas in red the reverse (ie the sum of CALL contracts bought and PUT contracts sold by the MPOE bot). Thus blue represents users going long BTC via options, and red represents users going short BTC via options.

The X scale counts time, in the unit of weeks since the start of the year. Week 44 irl (which just started today) is represented as #30 on the graph on account of MPEx coming out of beta in April and so week 14 irl (April 1st through 7th) shows up as week 1 on the graph.

Larger versions available for all the graphs, just click the image.

I. Weekly Long/Short positions as a percent of total (by contracts traded) :

long-short-percent-s

II. Weekly Long/Short positions as absolute values (by contracts traded) :

long-short-abs-s

III. Weekly Long/Short positions as a percent of total (by premiums paid) :

long-short-percent-cost-s

IV. Weekly Long/Short positions as absolute values (by premiums paid) :

long-short-abs-cost-s

V. Cummulative weekly Long/Short positions as a percent of total (by premiums paid) :

long-short-cumul-cost-percent-s

VI. Cummulative weekly Long/Short positions as absolute values (by premiums paid) :

long-short-cumul-cost-abs-s

In I and II contracts are added together irrespective of their strikes (so selling or buying deep in the money and deep out of the money options has the same effect). Also, option exercises are not counted in any way (so someone entering into a large position and then liquidating it by buying/selling would show up very differently from someone entering into a large position and then liquidating it by executing/being executed against).

Even with these limitations I think the graphs paint an interesting and informative picture. On one hand, MPEx is about to pass half a million BTC in contracts traded. On the other, it would seem the premier use of MPEx options is to hedge against BTC going down, rather than to speculate on BTC going up (although this tendency seems to be evening out, as graph V indicates). Finally, the seagull formation in graph VI seems to replicate the same pattern in the blockchain size, about one month delayed. Traditionally this was explained as an effect of SatoshiDICE adoption, but maybe it actually reflects something much deeper about Bitcoin adoption in general ?

Either way, any commentary is welcome, leave it below.

Category: MPEx
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