After marking a new $1,477 high on January. 24, Ether's (ETH) price was shaken down to $one,206 on January. 27. But according to derivatives markets, bulls remain confident that $2,000 is withal inside attain.

The neutral-to-surly put options open interest above $ane,360 is irrelevant, and simply 2,540 ETH options, equivalent to $iii.4 million in open interest, is above that price level. That being said, more than 99.v% of the put options open interest will get worthless if ETH trades at $1,360 or to a higher place.

ETH options aggregate open interest by strike. Source: Bybt

As shown to a higher place, information from both call and put options seems well balanced, as the open interest indicator favors bulls past a mere 34%. The data too shows that Ether'due south 79% yr-to-date rally has actually taken a toll on bears.

Currently, the neutral-to-bullish call options ranging from $1,000 to $i,340 corporeality to 59,730 ETH. That amounts to $79.vi million in open involvement, not counting those strikes beneath such range. Therefore, autonomously from dominating on a 23-to-1 ratio, the bulls have every incentive to keep pushing the price up.

For example, if ETH rallies above $one,440, another 56,000 call options come up into play, compared with a mere 7,600 put options. This equals some other $seventy meg in open interest favoring the neutral-to-bullish call option. The imbalance would then amount to $152 million, completely extinguishing bears' hopes.

Not every selection open interest is fix to expire over the adjacent couple of months.

ETH options aggregate open up interest past expiry. Source: Bybt

The expiry calendar for 2021 holds 50% of the open interest on Feb. 26 and Mar. 26, although longer-term options tend to gain more than relevance throughout the year.

Futures premium signals traders are bullish

The futures premium measures how expensive longer-term futures contracts are compared with the current spot in traditional markets. Information technology can be thought of as a relative reflection of investor optimism, and fixed-calendar futures tend to trade at a slight premium to regular spot exchanges.

These fixed-month futures contracts should trade with a 10% to 20% annualized premium (ground) in healthy markets, and whatsoever number higher up this range denotes farthermost optimism. Meanwhile, the lack of a premium is a signal that traders may be surly.

March 2021 ETH futures premium. Source: NYDIG Digital Avails Information

The above chart shows that the premium was cut drastically on Jan. 21 as Ether plunged by more 20% to test sub-$1,100 levels. More recently, on Jan. 27, the premium reached an eight.7% annualized rate nearly neutral-to-surly levels.

This information is more than enough evidence to back up the claim that the options market place is bullish. Even during the worst sell-offs over the last couple of months, derivatives markets have held a positive stance.

The current 2.9% charge per unit equals a healthy 20% annualized premium, indicating that bulls are non anticipating any bug.

Acme traders take room to add together long positions

Exchange-provided information highlights traders' long-to-curt net positioning. By analyzing every client'southward position on the spot, perpetual and futures contracts, one tin can obtain a clearer view of whether professional traders are leaning bullish or bearish.

With this said, there are occasional discrepancies in the methodologies between different exchanges, so viewers should monitor changes instead of absolute figures.

Exchanges' height traders ETH long-to-short ratio. Source: Bybt

The pinnacle traders indices at Binance and Huobi take been in net short ETH positions over the past week. OKEx stands out, every bit its meridian traders long-to-short has been increasing over the past five days and currently favors longs past 56%.

This shows that there is fiddling prove of excessive optimism by top traders while leaving room for leverage in the case of an upcoming bull run.

To sum up, both ETH options and futures markets bear witness clear signs that traders are incredibly bullish on Ether for the next couple of months.

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