Bitcoin’s unusually subdued options pricing and weak month-to-date activity create what ProCap CIO and Bitwise Advisor Jeff Park calls a dangerous asymmetry. Without volatility, upward momentum is unlikely, and the longer BTC remains “quiet”, the more violent the eventual move could be.
In a Jan. 27 post via X, Park described the current tape as “still a trader’s market,” arguing that low implied volatility and thin participation are insufficient foundations for a clean rally. “It is very unlikely that Bitcoin will find upward momentum without experiencing a significant increase in volatility,” he said.
“The fact that the IV is around 38, combined with the scary amount MTD gives me pause because it shows what metal complexes are doing (lower than any month in 2025 and especially bad for January in general). I literally can’t imagine being disappointed in a worse situation than this.”
What happened with silver and why it will repeat itself with Bitcoin
Park’s reference point is the silver market, which has gone from strong to chaotic. Silver prices soared above $117 an ounce on Monday, with reports pointing to a combination of speculative bidding along with tough physical conditions and heavy retail participation through bars, coins and physically backed ETFs.
Related books
This move was also marked by a sharp rise in the day. On January 26th, the most active silver futures contract rose 14%, the biggest single-day gain since 1985. This price movement coincided with an incredible spike in trading and options activity across silver vehicles.
Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balciunas highlighted its size, saying, “WHOA: SLV has $32 billion in volume. That’s 15 times the average and by far the highest volume of any security on the planet. For context, SPY is $24 billion, NVDA and TSLA are 160. Billion dollars. I can’t remember the last time something this relatively small took over like this. Maybe GameStop.”
WHOA: $SLV has a trading volume of $32 billion. This is 15 times the average and by far the highest trading volume of any security on the planet. For context, $SPY is $24 billion, $NVDA and $TSLA are $16 billion. I can’t remember the last time something relatively small took over like this. Maybe GameStop. pic.twitter.com/s6lVajUq4J
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) January 26, 2026
He then added that SLV “ended up trading $40 billion worth of stocks (on Monday),” adding, “To put it in perspective, that’s more than was traded in the entire first quarter of last year. January + February + March = $35 billion. Options volume is also stratospheric, with $1.5 billion already traded pre-market, three times more than any other ETF and five times more than Tesla or Nvidia. Again, it’s reminiscent of GameStop. How is this possible? ”
Exposure of “paper” as an accelerator
A common refrain in cryptocurrencies is that “synthetic” or “paper” Bitcoin suppresses spot prices. Park argued that the opposite dynamic is often underestimated, and used silver to illustrate how leverage and market structure can become catalysts.
Related books
“People often falsely blame ‘synthetic/paper’ Bitcoin for price suppression,” Park wrote. “I have long argued that the exact opposite is true. You can see how it shows up in silver below. Silver never had a 6 Sigma event because the spot market was so active.”
The silver crash, he says, was not caused by orderly spot demand. It was caused by “fraud” within the financial exposure. “Silver’s record crash comes from all the shenanigans behind ‘paper silver’ due to margin rules, leveraged products and instruments, liquidity and maturity conversion mismatches that create tremendous pressure at the breaking point where physical supply cannot be brought in fast enough to match the paper supply velocity,” he said.
“For Park, the lesson is directional but not calendar-dependent. “To root for Bitcoin means to root for its volatility,” he wrote, “Anyone who says otherwise doesn’t understand the fundamentals of commodity markets…Maybe not today or tomorrow, but eventually Bitcoin will be stripped of its many faces.” Volatility or bust? ”
At the time of writing, BTC was trading at $89,430.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart on TradingView.com
