Cboe compares Bitcoin perpetual futures with 0DTE options on risk
A new Cboe research paper argues that defined-risk options spreads give traders protection that perpetual futures structurally lack
Cboe Global Markets has weighed in on one of the hottest debates in derivatives: are Bitcoin perpetual futures and same-day options basically the same thing? Its answer, delivered with a market-structure researcher’s restraint, is no.
On July 14, 2026, Cboe’s Market Intelligence team published a paper titled “Crossed Wires: Separating Perception from Reality.” It compares Bitcoin perpetual futures, known as perps, with zero-days-to-expiration options, known as 0DTE. The core argument is that options traders can cap their losses with spreads, while perp traders have no equivalent built-in brake.
Two instruments, two very different risk shapes
A perpetual future is a futures contract that never expires, so traders can hold a leveraged position as long as they keep it funded. A 0DTE option expires the same day it trades, making it a bet on very short-term moves.
Cboe’s paper centers on the shape of each product’s payoff. Perps offer what the paper calls linear exposure. Every move in the underlying asset translates proportionally into gains or losses, multiplied by whatever leverage the trader chose. Losses can grow just as fast as gains, and a leveraged position can be liquidated when the trader’s collateral runs thin.
Options behave differently. Their payoffs are convex, meaning the upside can expand much faster than the move in the underlying, while the downside for a buyer is limited to what they paid. The paper stresses that this structure makes 0DTE options useful beyond pure speculation, pointing to hedging and income generation as use cases that defined-risk trades can support.
The headline statistic: roughly 92% of SPX 0DTE trading happens in defined-risk structures, according to the paper. These are spreads, where a trader buys one option and sells another to set both a maximum gain and a maximum loss. Perps offer no comparable built-in cap.
The April 21 case study
To make the contrast concrete, Cboe walked through a trading day from April 21, 2026. The S&P 500 fell 0.94% that session.
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A short perpetual futures position levered 10x returned 9.4%. An at-the-money SPX 0DTE put returned 404%, while an out-of-the-money put returned 617%.
Volume tells its own story
SPX 0DTE options hit a record average daily notional volume of $2.3 trillion during Q2 2026, accounting for more than 60% of typical SPX options volume.
Crypto perps posted average daily notional volume of around $230 billion over the same period, with most of that trading taking place on centralized offshore platforms. The SPX 0DTE market is, by notional volume, roughly ten times the size of the crypto perp market.
Cboe found that perp volumes move closely with Bitcoin’s price. 0DTE volumes, by contrast, have grown steadily across a range of market conditions.
Why this comparison is happening now
The paper arrives about six weeks after a regulatory milestone. On May 29, 2026, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission approved the first regulated US Bitcoin perpetual futures contracts, offered through Kalshi. That approval brought a product long associated with offshore exchanges into the domestic, regulated market.
What this means for traders and the market
For traders newly able to access regulated Bitcoin perps in the US, linear exposure with leverage means a bad move can wipe out a position entirely through liquidation, and there is no spread structure to set a floor.
The 92% figure is the most telling data point for the broader debate. Critics of 0DTE options often frame them as casino-style bets. Cboe’s data suggests the vast majority of that activity is happening in trades where the worst-case outcome is known in advance.
If perp activity rises and falls with Bitcoin’s price, that dependence on sentiment could amplify swings during sharp moves, particularly when leveraged positions get liquidated in clusters.
There is also a competitive angle. Cboe is an established options venue, and its research makes a case for the risk-management advantages of options-style structures. Readers should weigh the analysis with that context in mind.