Traders aren't panicking yet despite cooling crypto sentiment
Your day-ahead look for Sept. 28, 2026
Bitcoin BTC$83,034.73, ether ETH$2,658.17 and other major cryptocurrencies have come under pressure since the uptrend hit a wall last Monday. The usual next question is whether this has traders scrambling to buy crash insurance.
That’s evident from skew, an options market metric that tracks the spread between what traders pay for downside puts and what they pay for upside calls. A sudden put bid would mean puts getting much more expensive than calls. That’s not the case so far. But yes, calls are no longer in demand as they were a week ago, a sign that bullish sentiment has cooled.
“The 1.98v week-over-week move on BTC 7d skew to -0.45v sits at the 92nd percentile of its 52-week range against a -4.41v median, so downside remains historically cheap even after calls have given up their premium,” it said in an explainer on X. (v stands for volatility, options are often priced in terms of volatility).
“Put demand has jumped over the past few days. The question is whether that is a short-term hedge or the start of a regime shift,” it said on X.