Bullish clears longest-dated bitcoin options trade expiring in 2028

A bitcoin options contract expiring on January 28, 2028, just cleared on Bullish, making it the longest-dated options trade ever executed on a digital asset exchange. That’s roughly two and a half years of forward exposure to bitcoin’s price, the kind of time horizon that used to be reserved for traditional commodity and equity derivatives desks.

From launch to second place in under a year

Bullish, which trades on the NYSE under the ticker BLSH, launched its bitcoin options product on October 8, 2025. The initial offerings were modest: European-style options with tenors ranging from three weeks to three months, margined and settled in USDC with a multiplier of 1 BTC.

By early 2026, the exchange had climbed to the second position globally for bitcoin options open interest, trailing only Deribit, the long-reigning king of crypto options. In the process, Bullish leapfrogged major competitors including OKX, Binance, and CME.

Peak open interest during that stretch hit between $3B and $4B. Single-day trading volumes topped $1B, which represented roughly 20% of the entire global bitcoin options market.

A consortium of top-tier market makers, including Galaxy Digital and Cumberland, has supported liquidity on the platform from the start.

Why longer dates matter

The specific terms of the January 2028 trade, including strike price, notional size, and the counterparties involved, have not been disclosed. That’s standard practice for institutional block trades, where anonymity protects both sides from market impact.

The infrastructure catching up

Bullish operates a unified margin system that spans spot, futures, and options. In practice, this means a trader can use a single collateral pool to manage positions across all three product types rather than maintaining separate margin accounts for each.

In May 2026, Bullish’s options data became available on analytics platforms Laevitas and The Block. That integration matters because institutional traders rely heavily on third-party data aggregators for price discovery, volatility surface analysis, and competitive benchmarking. Being visible on those platforms effectively puts Bullish’s options market on the same dashboards where traders already monitor Deribit and CME.