Bitcoin's derivatives market is undergoing a structural rebalancing away from traditional dated futures, according to data from on-chain analytics firm Glassnode. Perpetual contracts now account for a larger share of leveraged trading, while options have steadily gained ground in hedging and volatility strategies.

Dated Bitcoin futures activity — contracts that bind counterparties to buy or sell at a fixed price on a set expiry date — across offshore crypto-native venues tracked by Glassnode has fallen approximately 97% from its 2021 level. Over the same span, options have expanded from roughly a quarter of crypto-native Bitcoin derivatives open interest to nearly half. The firm's analysis found that options gained market share in four of the five market regimes studied since 2019.

The decline does not signal the disappearance of futures. Instead, the market has divided the traditional functions of dated contracts between two instruments: perpetual contracts, which allow traders to maintain leveraged positions without an expiry date, and options, which grant the right but not the obligation to buy or sell at a predetermined price, providing tools for hedging, downside protection and volatility trading.

Perpetual contracts have emerged as the dominant instrument for traders seeking straightforward leveraged exposure to Bitcoin. Unlike conventional futures, perpetuals do not expire and instead rely on funding payments between long and short holders to keep contract prices close to the underlying asset.

A snapshot of Binance's market on September 18, 2026, illustrated the scale of the gap. The exchange's BTCUSDT perpetual held about 108,289 BTC of open interest, while its BTCUSDC perpetual carried another 19,465 BTC. Together, the two contracts represented roughly $9.93 billion in outstanding positions. By comparison, Binance's dated Bitcoin contracts expiring on September 25 and December 25, 2026, held a combined open interest of about $77 million at the time.

The comparison is limited to a single exchange and one point in time, but it shows how perpetuals have absorbed much of the leveraged trading that previously flowed through dated futures. For anyone reading Bitcoin's derivatives data, the practical effect is that dated futures open interest alone now captures only a small fraction of crypto-native leveraged activity.

Options have meanwhile become increasingly important as Bitcoin's market has matured. Their value extends beyond directional bets, allowing investors to hedge large holdings, protect against declines, sell calls to generate income, or trade volatility without taking a simple long or short position.

The trend reached a milestone in January 2026, when Bitcoin options open interest surpassed futures open interest for the first time in tracked data, reaching approximately $74.1 billion compared with roughly $65.22 billion in futures.

The changing of Bitcoin ownership has also increased demand for these instruments. Spot ETFs, corporate treasuries, investment funds and market makers can hold substantial Bitcoin exposure while using derivatives to alter or hedge the associated risk, rather than selling the underlying asset outright.

The collateral supporting derivatives trading has changed as well. According to Glassnode, crypto derivatives have increasingly moved away from Bitcoin-denominated collateral toward stable-value assets, reducing the risk that a trader's collateral falls in value at the same time as a leveraged position during a market selloff.

Traditional futures nonetheless continue to play an important role in regulated markets. Glassnode's data on offshore venues does not include CME, whose Bitcoin futures serve institutional investors and traders that require standardized contracts, regulated clearing and established risk-management infrastructure — meaning activity on regulated venues sits outside the offshore figures above.

That leaves dated futures with a more specialized role even as perpetuals dominate crypto-native leverage and options become increasingly important for portfolio risk management. More broadly, the shift reflects the maturation of Bitcoin's derivatives market: rather than a single futures product serving most trading needs, leverage, hedging, volatility and institutional exposure are increasingly handled by distinct instruments. How open interest is distributed across perpetuals, options and dated futures therefore serves as a gauge of where leverage, hedging and institutional exposure currently sit in the market.

The findings were reported by BitcoinKE on September 21, 2026, drawing on Glassnode's research. Source: BitcoinKE