Bitcoin's 6 November calls hold $1.6bn, five times any other week

Good morning. Bitcoin is $77,908, down 0.2% on the day and 7.8% over 30 days, after spot bitcoin funds sold $643m on Friday, their biggest outflow in 40 sessions. The midterm election is Tuesday and the US jobs report is Friday. One bitcoin expiry on Friday morning holds $1.6bn of calls.

The tape

Bitcoin (BTC) $77,908, -0.2% on the day, -2.7% on the week and -7.8% over 30 days. Ether (ETH) $2,284, +0.6% and -14.7% on the month. BNB, the largest exchange's own token, $705.83, -1.0% and -7.7%. Solana (SOL) $94.01, -1.5% and -20.9%. XRP $1.25, -0.5% and -15.6%. Bitcoin holds 60.0% of all crypto value, now $2.60tn.

Gainers: Dolphin (POD), a Solana charity token, +21.9% on $16.9m of volume against a $47.0m value; MEET48 (IDOL), a fan-voting platform, +18.0% and +244.1% on the week; Metaplex (MPLX), behind most Solana asset creation, +9.9% and +54.0%. Losers: Akedo (AKE), an AI game builder, -33.7% and -81.3% on the week; Powerledger (POWR), Sunday's biggest gainer, -21.0%; THORChain (RUNE), -18.1%.

Where to look

Six things today, in order: funds sold into Friday, Binance reopened and paid, retail long the alts, a prediction market third, the week's dates priced, regulated venues pick Hyperliquid.

1. 01

   Spot bitcoin funds sold $643.3m on 30 October, their biggest outflow in 40 sessions.

   BlackRock's IBIT lost $233.7m, Fidelity's FBTC $201.0m, Ark's ARKB $129.5m and Grayscale's GBTC $53.3m: every fund that moved, moved out. October closed at -$515.0m across 22 sessions: IBIT took in $931.8m and the other eleven funds sold $1.45bn.

   WatchA second IBIT outflow session this week.

2. 02

   Binance paid out $3.64bn net on the day it reopened bitcoin withdrawals.

   It says $6.34bn is set aside and 95% of affected assets replenished. Bitcoin left exchange addresses on net $1,301.7m on 1 November, so the coins went to self-custody, not to sellers.

   WatchThe reserve report due today.

3. 03

   Retail on OKX is at a 30-day high long solana while solana is down 20.9% on the month.

   The venue shows 3.47 long accounts per short in SOL, 4.87 in Dogecoin (DOGE) and 3.73 in XRP, against 2.24 in bitcoin, down from 2.74 on 29 October. Leverage keeps rotating out of bitcoin into what falls faster.

   WatchSolana under $90 with the ratio above 3.4.

4. 04

   Kalshi, the US event exchange, traded $708.5m in 24 hours, third among crypto's trading venues behind only Uniswap V4 and Curve.

   Polymarket US, the prediction market's licensed venue, added $108.7m and earns $86.17m of fees over 30 days, crypto's fourth-largest fee line, and its five busiest fee days of the last 90 are weekends: the business is sport, not the election.

   WatchPolymarket US above $4.5m of fees on 3 November.

5. 05

   The market prices a quiet election week.

   Bitcoin holding above $76,000 on 3 November trades at 86.5%; reaching $92,500 at any point in November is 10.5% and $100,000 is 3.05%.

   WatchThe $76,000 line for 3 November under 80%.

6. 06

   Two regulated exchange groups picked the same venue for US perpetual futures.

   ICE, which owns the New York Stock Exchange, took a stake in Trade[XYZ], a market-design firm, to run perpetuals on Hyperliquid's technology, and Kraken's parent plans registered markets there too; both await approval. Hyperliquid, the on-chain perpetuals venue, carries $10.58bn of open interest across 80 markets and $2.61bn of deposits, seventh of all chains.

   WatchA sign-off from the US derivatives regulator.

The deep dive

Bitcoin options expiring on Friday 6 November hold 20,532 coins of call open interest, $1.60bn, against 6,975 coins of puts. That is five times the calls on any other November expiry before the month-end; the two largest strikes are $82,000 and $85,000, 5.3% and 9.1% above spot.

We summed open interest by expiry across the listed book. Open interest builds with listing age, and 6 November has been quoted longer than the 13th, which would explain a larger number. It does not explain this one: the two hold almost identical puts, 6,975 coins against 6,967, while the calls differ fivefold.

The price agrees. At the money, 6 November implied volatility is 39.22 against 36.43 on the 27 November monthly: the shortest expiry on the board is the dearest. The 30-day implied volatility index for bitcoin reads 38.53 against a 30-day average of 38.02, so the curve as a whole prices nothing unusual.

The window runs from election night on 3 November to settlement at 08:00 UTC on the 6th, five and a half hours before the October employment report. Ether's 6 November expiry holds 27,119 calls against 30,781 puts, a ratio of 1.14. This is a bitcoin position, not a market-wide election hedge.

What would prove this wrong: the 6 November expiry's at-the-money volatility falling under the monthly's before Tuesday's vote, which would make the premium a listing artefact, not a price for the week.

The news

• Curve, the stablecoin exchange, traded $729.9m in 24 hours and earned $82,513 for it. That is 7.5 times its 90-day median day of $97.5m at an average fee of 1.1 basis points, against 12 on its 29 October spike. Volume at a basis point pays nobody.
• Strategy, the largest corporate bitcoin holder, sold about $431.8m of it this year to fund preferred dividends and buybacks. It reported $19.12bn of third-quarter net income and $125.43m of revenue. The bitcoin sold per quarter, $143.9m, is more than the software business books in a quarter.
• A compromised monitoring script drained $2.7m from more than 700 Polymarket wallets on 29 October. A third-party page monitor was replaced with a wallet drainer; one trader lost $800,000. The venue halted trading, restored it that evening and still took $2.89m of fees on 31 October.
• BNB Chain is building a second layer-1 beside the existing one, with no new token. The design targets 200 millisecond blocks and uses BNB for gas and staking, with testnet late in 2026. The existing chain holds $5.24bn of deposits, sixth among all chains.

Token talk: THORChain (RUNE)

THORChain (RUNE) is a cross-chain swap network: a user sends native bitcoin and receives native ether, with no wrapped token or custodian. Node operators bond RUNE to secure it, and every pool holds RUNE against the asset it quotes, so the token tracks the pools rather than a fee stream.

It is here because the FBI asked its node operators and analytics firms to refuse transfers from 608 Ethereum and 19 bitcoin addresses tied to the $6.3bn Binance theft. An analyst counted $242m of the stolen funds through Tron in two days and about $31m through THORChain. Swap volume hit 2,151.65 bitcoin on 1 November, 4.3 times the 30-day median of 506.71. Then a double refund of 10 ether paused 12 networks, and the first 11 hours of 2 November carried 11.75 bitcoin.

RUNE is $0.515, -18.1% on the day, -29.9% over 30 days and -41.0% over a year, 97.5% below its May 2021 high of $20.87. Market value is $169.55m, with 329.29m of 353.88m tokens issued and an 11.2% turnover on $18.98m of volume. Watch: whether node operators adopt the blocklist, and whether volume returns to its 507-coin median.

Token Tape is written by an automated research desk built and supervised by Eric Manoukian. Figures are pulled live each morning and errors are possible. Nothing here is investment advice. The editor may hold positions in assets discussed.