Bitcoin put/call ratio and options skew: how to read them

The bitcoin put/call ratio is the number of put options divided by the number of call options, measured either by open interest (contracts currently open) or by trading volume (contracts traded in a day). A reading below 1 means calls outnumber puts; above 1 means puts dominate. A separate metric, options skew, compares the implied volatility of puts and calls at the same delta and shows which side the market is paying more for. As of 2:00 PM ET on October 30, 2026, the Deribit put/call ratio by open interest was 0.67 while the 24-hour volume ratio was 1.15 (our Deribit data): positions were stacked in calls, but on a day when bitcoin dropped 4.6%, the trading was mostly in puts.

How the put/call ratio is calculated

A put gives the right to sell bitcoin at the strike price; a call gives the right to buy. The exchange publishes open interest and volume for every contract, and the rest is arithmetic: add up all puts, add up all calls, divide.

On Deribit you can do this yourself through the public get_book_summary_by_currency endpoint. It returns open interest and 24-hour volume for each instrument, and the option type is in the instrument name suffix: -P for a put, -C for a call. That is exactly how we compute the figure for our "All the bitcoin numbers" block. At 2:00 PM ET on October 30, 2026, the calculation looked like this:

Total bitcoin options open interest on Deribit at that moment was 302,760 BTC, roughly $23.3B at the $77,042 index price (Deribit statistics page).

Equity markets use the same idea. Cboe publishes three daily put/call ratios: total, index options only, and single-stock options only. When we checked on October 30, 2026, they read 0.85, 0.95 and 0.58. Index options lean toward puts because institutions use them to hedge portfolios; single-stock options lean toward calls. The same split between insurance and bets exists in bitcoin.

Open interest vs. volume: two different indicators

The two versions of the ratio answer different questions, and on October 30, 2026 they pointed in opposite directions.

Open interest is the market's memory: it still holds positions opened in the summer for the December expiry. Volume is today's mood: on a day when bitcoin fell toward $76,500 (market summary), participants were trading protection. Neither number cancels the other.

What counts as "normal" for bitcoin

Bitcoin's open-interest put/call ratio has historically stayed well below 1: speculative demand for calls is higher in crypto than in equities. In Glassnode's "Navigating Bitcoin Options" report of August 31, 2023, both versions of the ratio oscillated between 0.42 and 0.48, which the authors described as indicative of prevailing bullish sentiment. The 0.67 reading on October 30, 2026 sits above that range: puts make up a noticeably larger share of positioning than they did in 2023.

There are no hard thresholds. Direction matters more than level: a ratio rising week after week means the market is adding protection or downside bets; a falling one means puts are being sold or calls added. Historical series are available in Glassnode Studio.

Why a high put/call ratio is not always bearish

The indicator's main trap: open interest does not say who bought and who sold. Every open contract has two sides and is counted once.

• Sold puts. When volatility is high, option writers happily sell puts below the market to collect premium. Put open interest rises, the ratio rises, yet the put seller is betting the price will not fall. That is exactly how CoinDesk explained the jump in the put/call ratio to 0.91 in March 2021: in a report citing data from Skew, the rise was attributed to put selling rather than panic.
• Hedge, not bet. A holder of spot or futures buys puts as insurance. They are not expecting a crash; they are protecting against one. For them a rising ratio means caution, not a bearish view.
• Covered calls. Miners and large holders sell calls against their coins for premium. Call open interest rises, the ratio falls, it looks "bullish," but the seller has agreed to give up the coins at the strike and is not expecting a big rally.

Bottom line: the put/call ratio shows where contracts are concentrated, not which way the bets lean. For direction you need a second indicator.

Skew: what it is and why it is often better

Skew compares not the number of contracts but their price, or more precisely the implied volatility that the option price is built from. The standard version uses 25-delta options: a call with a delta of 25% and a put with a delta of −25%, meaning equally far out of the money on each side. If the put at that distance costs more than the call, the market is paying a premium for downside protection; if the call costs more, it is paying for upside participation.

There are two ways to write the same thing, and their signs are opposite:

Coin Metrics states that with the call-minus-put convention the sign reads directly as directional bias: positive means the market is paying up for upside, negative means it is paying for downside protection, which it calls the more common state in most option markets. Glassnode computes it the other way round and normalizes by at-the-money volatility so that periods with different overall volatility can be compared. Check the convention before comparing two charts, or "bullish" and "bearish" get swapped.

Why skew often beats the put/call ratio: it comes from live quotes rather than accumulated contracts, and it measures the price of protection, which is what participants are paying right now. The same approach underlies the DVOL index, which uses the whole curve rather than two points.

What it looked like on October 30, 2026

We pulled quotes for every bitcoin option from the Deribit API at 2:07 PM ET on October 30, 2026 and computed each strike's delta from its mark implied volatility (Black-Scholes, ignoring interest rates). The profile by expiry came out like this:

What this shows:

1. Puts are richer than calls at every tenor. The risk reversal is negative from one day out to eight months: the market is paying a premium for downside protection. The gap is widest at the front, almost 6 volatility points, because the price had fallen 4.6% in 24 hours to $77,192 and the fear and greed index had collapsed from 51 to 30 (our data).
2. The open-interest put/call ratio nonetheless looks "bullish." The expiry with the largest open interest, December 25, holds 135,610 BTC at a ratio of 0.66: one and a half times as many calls as puts. For November 6 the ratio is as low as 0.31, but that does not mean a rally is expected by then: some of those calls were surely sold as covered calls, and some were bought earlier at different prices.
3. The indicators do not contradict each other. Accumulated positions are in calls, fresh demand on a down day is for puts, and protection got more expensive: a typical correction inside bullish positioning. DVOL at the same moment stood at 40.51 versus 37.99 a week earlier ("Numbers").

For comparison: on January 2, 2026, analysts at Block Scholes noted that bitcoin's 7-day 25-delta skew had flipped to a call premium of +0.74 points after a put premium had dominated most of the fourth quarter of 2025. Sign flips like that are a more informative signal than the absolute level of the put/call ratio.

How to read put/call and skew together: step by step

1. Identify which put/call ratio you are looking at: open interest or volume, and over what period. An aggregator may show either.
2. Compare it with the past year, not with "the 1.0 threshold." For bitcoin 0.5 is routine and 0.9 is rare.
3. Check skew at the same tenor and confirm the sign convention. If the put/call ratio is high but puts are cheap (skew favors calls), puts are more likely being sold than bought.
4. Break it down by expiry. The aggregate ratio mixes weekly and yearly contracts. The nearest large expiry and the date with the most open interest (see our options expiry guide) matter more than the average.
5. Add futures. Futures open interest and the funding rate show whether futures confirm what options say. On October 30, 2026, Binance funding held at 0.01% per 8 hours while open interest fell 4.7% in 24 hours (market summary): longs were not being liquidated en masse despite the drop.
6. Record the date. A reading is only meaningful with the time and price at which it was taken.

Limitations

• One exchange. Deribit is one of the largest crypto options venues, but CME, OKX, Binance and Bybit list options too. Their ratios can differ, and aggregators combine them differently.
• Open interest cannot distinguish buyer from seller. This is the put/call ratio's core flaw, and no formula fixes it.
• Skew depends on a model. The 25-delta point is computed; our estimate from mark volatility is not an exchange quote and may differ from Glassnode or Coin Metrics by a few tenths of a point.
• Sign conventions differ. The same market reads "bullish" on one provider and "bearish" on another unless you check the formula.
• Expiries break the series. After a large quarterly expiry, open interest collapses and the ratio can jump without any change in sentiment.
• It is a positioning indicator, not a forecast. A low put/call ratio accompanied the 2023 rally, but it does not predict reversals on its own.

FAQ

Which is better, the put/call ratio or skew? For sentiment, skew: it reflects the current price of protection and does not depend on old positions. The open-interest put/call ratio shows where contracts are concentrated and at which expiry.

Is a put/call ratio of 0.67 high or low for bitcoin? By 2023 standards, when the ratio hovered around 0.42⁠–⁠0.48 (Glassnode), it is high. By equity standards, where Cboe's total ratio was 0.85 on October 30, 2026, it is low. Compare with the same market's own history.

Where can I see the bitcoin put/call ratio and skew for free? Open-interest put/call, volume and per-expiry data are on the Deribit statistics page and in our "All the bitcoin numbers" block. Historical skew by tenor comes from Glassnode Studio and Coin Metrics, partly paywalled.

Why is bitcoin skew tilted toward puts if "everyone expects a rally"? Downside protection costs more in almost every market: holders outnumber short sellers, and holders buy puts. Coin Metrics describes a negative risk reversal as the normal state for most option markets. Bitcoin sees periods of call premium, as in the 2021 run-up and early 2026, but they are shorter.

For how options work and what happens on expiry day, see our guide to Deribit expiries; for overall volatility, the DVOL explainer. Live figures are on the bitcoin page.

This is not investment advice.