Market Wrap: Bitcoin Hits $18.4K; $260M in Ether Options Expire in December

Higher spot volumes Wednesday - and record volumes for the past month - are helping push bitcoin higher.

Ether options for December pass 550,000 ETH. Bitcoin trading around $17,688 as of 21:00 UTC. Gaining 0.17% over the previous 24 hours.

Bitcoin made gains for the third straight day this week, going as high as $18,474 according to CoinDesk 20 data.

The last time bitcoin was in this range occurred way back in December 2017.

Constantin Kogan, managing director at Wave Financial, points to a $18,690-$18,950 "Resistance" area where exchange books have a number of sell orders piled up, though he expects bitcoin to push above that soon.

The bitcoin derivatives market, which was nascent in the last major bull run, continues to see open interest rise.

Bitcoin options on major venues, for example, are at over $4 billion as of press time, the highest they have ever been and a sign some smart money is looking to hedge away any risks volatility may - or may not - bring.

"Today's active options market - which was nonexistent back in 2017 - is keeping any meteoric rises in check," said Micah Erstling, a trader at firm GSR. Nevertheless, Erstling sees more money piling in because of crypto's eye-popping performance so far in 2020.

Traders are likely taking bets about the future of Ethereum's technical roadmap to "2.0", an ambitious effort to insert staking and higher efficiency while porting over its native asset, ether.

"Even while BTC options had open concentrated in different expiration months, ETH consistently had open interest concentrated in December."