Two New York Stock Exchange-affiliated venues have eliminated the 25,000-contract position limit on options tied to 11 crypto exchange-traded funds.
NYSE Arca and NYSE American filed three rule changes each on March 10 to remove contract position limits and price discovery restrictions for options linked to Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) ETFs listed on their exchanges. The Securities and Exchange Commission acknowledged the filings and waived the standard 30-day waiting period, so the changes are now in effect.
Those limits were put in place when crypto ETF options began trading in November 2024 to guard against market manipulation and excessive volatility. Removing them aligns treatment of these products with other commodity ETF options, giving institutional traders greater flexibility, potentially boosting liquidity and easing entry and exit from positions.
The rule changes also permit these crypto ETF options to be traded as FLEX options, which allow customizable terms such as non-standard strike prices, expiration dates and exercise styles.
Affected products include BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC), ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB), and Bitcoin and Ether ETFs from Bitwise and Grayscale, among others — 11 crypto ETF options in total.
Separately, in late July the SEC approved removing the 25,000-contract limit for the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC). Nasdaq’s options exchange, Nasdaq International Securities Exchange, has proposed raising the contract position limit for BlackRock’s IBIT to 1 million; that proposal remains under SEC review as of a Feb. 27 notice.
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