A single trader has placed a $68 million bitcoin bet targeting a breakout to $90,000 just after the U.S. midterm elections in early November, according to CoinDesk’s Daybook newsletter. The trade stands out in an otherwise listless crypto market — and it is not the only large wager pointing higher into the end of the year.
Bitcoin (Credits: CoinDesk)
$68 million bitcoin bet targets $90,000 after midterms
Bitcoin was trading at around $84,459 at the time of the report, pretty much where it was on Saturday, around $80,000, offering little news on the price front. Most other major cryptocurrencies — including ether at $2,490.55, XRP, solana, dogecoin at $0.08295, and BNB at $748.57 — were equally listless, according to CoinDesk.
In contrast, options trading on the decentralised platform Derive offered some excitement. The platform told CoinDesk that one trader took a $68 million bet that bitcoin’s spot price would climb above $90,000 just after the U.S. midterm elections. There has also been an increase in bets implying market prices will top $100,000 by Christmas.
The $68 million trade itself was placed on October 20, when a single wallet bought 800 contracts of $90,000 call options expiring on November 6 on Derive. Each contract represents one bitcoin. At current bitcoin prices, that is approximately $68 million in face value — the largest open bitcoin position on Derive, the exchange told CoinDesk.
How the bitcoin $90,000 call options work
A call option gives the holder the right, but not the obligation, to purchase the underlying asset at a predetermined price on or before a specific date. In plain terms, it locks in the right to buy at today’s agreed price in the future — so even if the market price is higher when the date arrives, the holder can still buy at the agreed level.
That structure is important for understanding what the bet does — and does not — mean. It is a large, leveraged wager on a post-election move, not a guarantee that bitcoin will reach $90,000. Options traders routinely place such bets to express a view, hedge other positions, or speculate on volatility around a known event, and a single position, however large, does not by itself move the spot market to a target.
Still, the timing is deliberate. The options expire on November 6, just after the U.S. midterm elections in early November, placing the bet squarely on the market’s reaction to that political event rather than on a longer-term trend. The parallel rise in bets implying prices above $100,000 by Christmas suggests some traders are positioning for a stronger finish to the year — while the broader market, for now, remains quiet.
For readers following the crypto market, the takeaway is narrower than the headline: one trader, on one platform, has put significant capital behind a short-term post-election breakout. Whether that view proves right will be decided by the market in the days after the vote — not by the size of the bet alone. This article reports what CoinDesk reported and is not investment advice.
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Source: CoinDesk — read the full story there.
