Trading Options on Bybit

Start with the mechanics, not the platform

Crypto Options: Covered Calls and Protective Puts, Explained covers what a call and put actually are, and the two strategies (covered calls and protective puts) worth learning first. That doesn’t change here. This guide is about what’s different specifically about trading options on Bybit rather than Deribit.

Where Bybit’s options product differs

• Liquidity concentration. Deribit has historically carried the deepest BTC/ETH options liquidity in the market; Bybit’s options liquidity, while real, generally sits behind it, worth checking the order book depth at your strike before assuming you’ll get a clean fill, especially further from the current price. In practice this shows up as a wider bid-ask spread the further you get from the current price and the front-month expiry: a strike 20% out-of-the-money three months out might have a spread wide enough that your realistic fill is meaningfully worse than the mid-price quoted on screen.
• Unified account model. As covered in our ETH futures guide on Bybit, Bybit has moved toward a Unified Trading Account structure in many regions: options margin can share this same account as spot and futures, a different mental model from a fully separate options wallet. This cuts both ways: unused margin from a futures position can effectively backstop an options trade, but a losing options position can also reduce the margin available to unrelated futures or spot-margin positions in the same account.
• Interface integration. Bybit surfaces options within the same broader trading app as its other products, which some traders find more convenient and others find more cluttered than Deribit’s options-focused interface.
• Premium and margin currency. Bybit typically quotes and settles options premiums in USDC rather than in the underlying coin. Check which currency you’re actually paying and receiving before comparing a quoted premium to Deribit’s coin-denominated pricing: “0.01 BTC” and “$600” aren’t interchangeable once BTC’s price moves between the quote and the comparison.
• Fee structure. Options fees on Bybit are charged as a percentage of the premium rather than of the contract’s full notional value, usually with a cap so a deep in-the-money option doesn’t generate a fee larger than sense would suggest. That fee still eats directly into a covered call’s income, so it’s worth checking the current schedule before sizing a trade around an expected premium.

Worked example: what a covered call actually pays

Say you hold 1 BTC and BTC is trading at $60,000. You sell one 30-day covered call at the $66,000 strike (10% above spot) for a premium of 0.012 BTC (worth about $720 at the moment you sell it). Three ways this can play out:

• BTC finishes at $58,000 (below strike). The call expires worthless. You keep your 1 BTC and the 0.012 BTC premium. Your BTC position lost value along with the market; the call didn’t protect you, it just added income on top of a normal drawdown.
• BTC finishes at $63,000 (above spot, below strike). The call still expires worthless because price never reached $66,000. You keep the coin and the premium, and you also benefited from the price appreciation up to $63,000, the best-case outcome for a covered call seller.
• BTC finishes at $70,000 (above strike). Your BTC is called away at $66,000. You collect $66,000 plus the $720 premium (effectively $66,720 per coin), but you missed the $3,280 per coin ($70,000 − $66,720) you’d have kept by simply holding. That’s the real cost of the trade: not a cash loss, but an opportunity cost that only shows up once price runs past your strike.

Run a similar trade every month and you’re collecting roughly 1.2% of your BTC’s value every 30 days when it isn’t called away, on a simple, non-compounding basis that’s about 14% a year, though real premiums move with implied volatility and won’t stay this consistent trade to trade.

Protective puts on Bybit

The same downside-insurance logic from the Deribit guide applies here: buy a put below the current price, and if BTC or ETH falls, the put gains value and offsets the loss on your holding. On Bybit specifically, a protective put draws on the same Unified Trading Account margin as everything else, so buying one doesn’t require a separate options-only deposit the way it might on a platform with fully segregated wallets; the premium is simply debited from your available balance. Choosing a strike is the same trade-off anywhere: a put closer to the current price costs more but starts protecting sooner; a put further out-of-the-money is cheaper but leaves more of the initial drawdown unprotected before it kicks in.

Walkthrough: selling a covered call on Bybit

1. Confirm you hold the underlying asset in your account in the amount the contract requires. A covered call assumes you already own the coin you’d be obligated to deliver if assigned; Bybit doesn’t lend you the asset to cover this trade type.
2. Open the Options section and select the asset, expiry, and strike above the current price. The chain displays premium, implied volatility, and open interest per strike, and open interest is a reasonable rough proxy for how liquid a specific strike actually is.
3. Sell to open the call, and confirm the premium (and the currency it settles in, typically USDC) before submitting.
4. Track it to expiry the same way described in the Deribit guide: worthless expiry below the strike keeps your premium and your coins; settling above the strike means your coins are called away at the strike price.
5. Decide whether to let it ride or close early. You can buy back the same call before expiry to exit the position, useful if your view changes mid-trade, though doing so means paying whatever the option is worth at that moment, which moves with both price and time decay, not just your original premium in reverse.

FAQ

Do I need a separate wallet for options on Bybit? Not necessarily. Under Bybit’s Unified Trading Account model, options typically draw on the same margin balance as spot, futures, and margin positions rather than requiring a dedicated options-only deposit. Check your account’s current structure, since Bybit’s account model has changed over time and not every account is on the same version.

What happens if I don’t actually hold the underlying at expiry for a covered call? This shouldn’t happen if the trade is set up correctly: a covered call requires holding the underlying for the life of the option specifically so you’re not exposed to unlimited risk if it’s assigned. Selling a call without holding the coin (a “naked” call) is a fundamentally different, uncapped-risk trade, not a variation of what’s described here.

Are Bybit options cash-settled or physically settled? Verify this against current product documentation before trading. Settlement mechanics affect what actually happens in your account at expiry and are exactly the kind of detail that can change between when this guide is written and when you read it.

How is Bybit’s implied volatility display different from Deribit’s? Both platforms show IV per strike as part of the options chain, but how prominently it’s surfaced differs: Deribit’s interface is built options-first and tends to foreground IV more, while Bybit’s is one tab inside a broader trading app. The underlying concept is identical on both: higher IV means the market expects more future price movement, and that pushes premiums up regardless of which platform you’re quoting it on.

Risk