Deribit is my latest discovery from the crazy crypto world. It all started with simple buy-and-hold operations back in 2017.
What followed was, a day trading on Poloniex, I even built a custom Ethereum mining rig. I have played with cloud mining contracts from hashflare, and now I've found my way into Bitcoin / Ethereum options trading.
It's not that I would call myself an expert in options trading, in fact, I have made just a couple of put sales in the regular stock market - I tend to write puts against dividend stocks I would love to have (if assigned)
Update: This article has been originally written back in May 2020, some things may have changed ever since. If you are interested to learn more, consider booking an online consultation with me: Selling Covered Call Options on Crypto (BTC/ETH/SOL)
In the case of Bitcoin / Ethereum, unfortunately, there are no dividends, and taking into account high volatility the idea of selling puts might actually sound wrong, instead, it seems some should buy calls. Anyhow, I'm no expert on options trading, and the following written should be taken with a grain of salt
Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links to deribit.com bitcoin options trading website, by clicking on links on this page and by investing with deribit, I will earn affiliate income at no cost to you. Also, I'm not a financial advisor and I don't give you any advice, I'm just sharing my own experience. Investments in stocks, funds, bonds or cryptos are risk investments and you could lose some or all of your money. Do your due diligence before investing in any kind of asset.
Depositing Funds
As I had some ETH both on Coinbase and Poloniex accounts, I thought cool - I will make a direct transfer, but on the deribit Ethereum deposit pages it was said that exchanges might not work and better to use an Ethereum wallet for transferring funds to deribit.
Warning about depositing funds on Deribit
Luckily I had a MyEtherWallet and I transferred some ETH from Poloniex to MyEtherWallet
It was not long and ETH was already in MyEtherWallet, next was to transfer it to Deiribit.
To play safe I decided to transfer just 0.5 ETH to Deribit (equals $81.95)
In a matter of another couple of minutes - and ETH was deposited on Deiribit.
Now it was time to get hands dirty and make the first options trade on the Deiribit platform
Writing a put on Deribit
I decided to start low with writing puts against ETH.
Unfortunately, there were not many options for ETH, just four with expiration today, with expiration after a week, two months, and five months.
I made the following put
Order Type: Market
SELL ETH-28JUN19-100-P x 1
Margin = 0.10261162
I was hoping to see my total balance increase, but instead, I saw it actually decreasing. Strange. Made another put sell, this time:
ETH-28JUN19-150-P
Again, the total balance decreased.
Made more put sells, still total balance decreasing.
Then under the transaction log I found all my trades listed, and also this was the first place where I finally saw the balance increasing:
Transaction log
Now, there are more questions than answers right now. Because I still don't understand, if I have made 3 put sell today, collected in premium 0.0984 eth, how comes that my equity balance is 0.4749, not 0.5984, also where is this premium?
Either there is some catch, or there is something I don't just get it?
Anyhow, here is what it should look like, I deposited 0.5 eth today and sold 3 different premiums with one expiration day on June 28, 2019, In total, I collected 0.0984 eth. Sounds like a 19.8% yield in less than 78 days to me.
With today's ETH/USD exchange rates that would give me $16.34 in premium. Humble, but for getting my foot wet, pretty good.
Seems I will come out with Part 2, after June 28. Because right now, despite I have successfully transferred funds to the platform and made 3 put sells I still don't understand how this platform is operating.
If you want to give it a try and bear the risk, here is my affiliate link to the Deribit signup page, by using this link I will get an affiliate income at no cost to you,
Still puzzled? Consider booking an online consultation: Selling Covered Call Options on Crypto (BTC/ETH/SOL)