Key points overview
Bitcoin briefly surpassed $95,000 at the start of 2026, but options traders expect there to be about a 30% chance that the price of Bitcoin will fall below $80,000 by the end of June.
Trading activity on the decentralized platform Derive.xyz shows a significant downward bias, with a large open interest in put options between $75,000 and $80,000, indicating that the market expects prices to retreat to the mid-$70,000s.
Geopolitical tensions have escalated again, including U.S. President Donald Trump's recent threat to impose tariffs on European imports related to his controversial plans to occupy Greenland, which poses risks to Bitcoin prices.
$BTC Under the influence of President Donald Trump's tariff comments, gold prices fell below $91,000, with data from decentralized trading venues indicating that gold prices are expected to decline further in the coming months.
Derive.xyz is a decentralized on-chain options, perpetual contracts, and structured products trading platform, where traders believe there is a 30% probability that Bitcoin will fall below $80,000 by the end of June. The largest centralized options exchange, Deribit, holds a similar view.
The options market is clearly leaning bearish, with a 30% probability that Bitcoin will fall below $80,000 by June 26, while the probability of it rising above $120,000 during the same period is 19%,” said Sean Dawson, the research director of the agreement, to CoinDesk.
Options are a type of derivative contract that allows you to bet on the price of Bitcoin, much like betting on a sports game. Here’s how it works: you pay a small fee to lock in a 'hypothetical' trade. If the price of Bitcoin rises above a certain predetermined level, you can buy at a lower price, thus making a significant profit. This is called a call option.
If the price falls below the preset level, you can profit by selling high. This is called a put option. In either case, if the market moves contrary to your expectations, you may lose the purchase fee and the option fee.
It is this crowdsourced price guessing that reveals that people expect there is a 30% probability that Bitcoin will fall below $80,000.
This move will bring prices to their lowest level since April 2025. At that time, due to Trump's imposition of comprehensive tariffs on imports from other countries, global markets were shaken, and the price of the largest cryptocurrency plummeted to $75,000.
Concerns about tariffs have resurfaced as Trump threatens to impose a 10% tariff on imports from 10 European countries in retaliation for their opposition to his plans to annex Greenland. The price of Bitcoin has fallen from $95,000 to $91,000.
Dawson believes these geopolitical tensions could lead to greater losses.
The increasing geopolitical tensions between the United States and Europe—especially around Greenland—have raised the risks of regime change and a return to a high volatility environment, a dynamic that is not yet reflected in spot prices,” he said.
He explained that the options skew, which measures the price difference between call options and put options, remains negative, indicating that there is downside risk in the short term.
On the Derive and Deribit platforms, put options with strike prices between $75,000 and $80,000 have a very concentrated open interest. This indicates that the market expects prices to drop to the mid-$70,000s.