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Pro traders added to shorts as Bitcoin price broke $12K — Data shows

As Bitcoin (BTC) breaks the $12,000 resistance, derivatives markets are flirting with overly excessive bullish sentiment. The futures basis and the options 25% delta skew both reached the same levels seen now on October 12 when BTC briefly tested $11,700 but failed to maintain momentum.

What differentiates the current situation from nine days ago is the positions of top crypto traders. On Oct. 12, these traders increased their longs, but during the recent move to $12,000 these professional traders are opening up short positions.

Despite this flip in sentiment, traders should not automatically conclude that today’s pump will turn into a flop exclusively based on the longs-to-shorts indicator. For starters, there is no way to know for sure how the top traders are positioned off-exchange.

For this reason, derivatives pricing is a better way to assess how bullish or bearish professional traders might be. This indicator focuses on the actual market conditions, whereas both the fear and greed and options put-to-call ratio are backward-looking.

Futures markets tend to trade at a slight premium to regular spot exchanges. This event is not exclusive to crypto markets but rather a derivatives effect.