After Binance was hacked and over $6.3 billion was stolen, large traders increased their holdings of Bitcoin put options to hedge against downside risk.

on Oct. 30, according to CoinDesk, after Binance was hacked and lost approximately $6.3 billion in crypto assets, large Bitcoin traders quickly increased their positions in put options to hedge against short-term correction risks. Binance stated that approximately $3 billion of the stolen assets have been frozen, including $2.3 billion in USDT and USDC. According to Nicolas Quatravaux, head of Paradigm EMEA, the first large trade occurred about 15 minutes after funds first flowed out of the Binance wallet and before the news went public, when buyers purchased 250 BTC put options with a $78,000 strike price expiring on Oct. 31, with a notional value of approximately $20 million.

Three minutes later, prices for trades of similar size had risen by approximately 35%. Within eight hours of the incident, the notional value of large BTC options block trades handled by Paradigm totaled approximately $590 million, representing roughly half of Deribit’s total volume for the same period, with put options dominating. This included two put positions of 1,000 BTC each, expiring in mid-November at a $74,000 strike price, with a combined notional value of roughly $155 million. Order flow was concentrated in the $74,000 to $78,000 range, suggesting traders were primarily implementing defensive hedges against near-term pullbacks rather than positioning for a severe crash. According to Velo, BTC option skew briefly touched 18%, while skew across all tenors remained positive.