Checking the Box on the Efficiency of CME Bitcoin Futures Options

Abstract

The adoption of new financial instruments is naturally met with skepticism and apprehension. Capital markets as we know them today possess the amazing capability to package any exposure into a digestible instrument for market participants to utilize. However, prudence requires us to verify that these instruments do not suffer from inefficiencies that may prove hazardous to investors. In this article, the authors verify the efficiency of CME Bitcoin Futures Options by testing boundary arbitrage, put-call parity arbitrage, and box spread arbitrage conditions. The results strongly suggest that no reasonable arbitrage opportunities exist and that CME Bitcoin Futures Options are well-suited for institutional scale investing. Hence, we believe their use by institutions to hedge, speculate, and/or facilitate transactions between decentralized markets (“DeFi”) and traditional markets (“TradFi”) will grow significantly in the next few years.