Analysis: On-chain options are the biggest opportunity in the cryptocurrency field
User Momilio posted: On-chain options are currently the biggest blank space and opportunity in the cryptocurrency field. This content is excerpted from its upcoming on-chain options research report, currently just a summary of one chapter. Momilio stated: Mature financial markets will eventually expand to options, and cryptocurrency has reached a turning point; constraints are no longer regulatory or infrastructural, market-making liquidity has improved, and pricing systems can now support larger-scale transactions. It also noted: The trading volume of on-chain options is still only 6.9% of Deribit's options trading volume, and to reach critical scale, a large influx of retail order flow is necessary.
Momilio stated: The annual trading contracts for U.S. options increased from 4.19 billion in 2017 to 15.2 billion in 2025, a growth of 263%, primarily due to retail investors. After Robinhood launched commission-free options in December 2017, the proportion of S&P 500 options on the same day rose from 5% to over 60% within ten years. By 2023, the proportion of contracts expiring within a week rose to 68%, with same-day options accounting for 43%; SSRN research shows that over 75% of retail-related trades are contracts expiring on the same day.
In India, the premium for stock options is expected to reach 190.65 trillion rupees by the fiscal year 2026, which is 45.8 times that of the fiscal year 2016, with over 90% of retail derivatives traders only engaging in options. By the end of 2024, the Securities and Exchange Board of India will raise the minimum contract size from 500,000 rupees to 1.5 million rupees and restrict weekly expirations to only one benchmark index, with premiums still increasing by 7% in the fiscal year 2026. In the first half of 2026, the trading volume of options contracts on Indian exchanges reached 39.3 billion, which is 4.5 times that of the U.S. at 8.7 billion, while U.S. premiums of $6.3 trillion are nearly 5 times India's $1.3 trillion.