On April 30, 2026, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) officially approved the Nasdaq ISE exchange to increase the position and exercise quota for iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) options from 250k contracts to 1 million contracts, a fourfold increase. The SEC stated in the approval order that the new limit complies with the relevant provisions of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, aiming to prevent fraud and manipulation, and to protect investors and the public interest.

The previous 250k contract limit originated from a phased adjustment gradually relaxed by the SEC from July 2025 to March 2026, essentially a "preventive" measure set by regulators during the initial listing of Bitcoin ETF options. As IBIT’s asset size surpasses $62.7 billion, its daily trading volume can now support larger operational scales. Nasdaq argued in its application that even if all 1 million contracts are exercised, the corresponding Bitcoin exposure would only account for 0.278% of the total circulating Bitcoin supply worldwide, well below the threshold that could trigger systemic market risks. Based on this assessment, the SEC adopted this judgment, believing that IBIT has sufficient liquidity and market size, and that increasing the limit would not significantly raise the risk of market manipulation.
Currently, IBIT accounts for up to 98% of trading volume and 96% of open interest among all Bitcoin ETF options, making it the dominant underlying asset in the options market. After the limit increase, the nominal exposure potential expands to over $50 billion to $65 billion. Analysis suggests that the overall liquidity of the Bitcoin market is expected to improve by 10% to 25%, with institutional trading activity possibly increasing by 15% to 40%. The new regulation releases operational space exceeding $1 billion, further opening channels for large capital allocations by sovereign funds, pension funds, and other major investors. Institutions can use this to build cross-market risk hedging systems, volatility arbitrage matrices, and structured products.
However, increased capacity does not necessarily mean enhanced stability. Some analysts point out that larger option exposures imply greater hedging liquidity pressure: when prices reach key levels, market makers are forced to react sharply, potentially amplifying intraday volatility. This dynamic aligns with the trend of Bitcoin gradually being regarded as a “macro liquidity-sensitive asset,” which may further shift pricing power from native crypto platforms to traditional exchanges such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and Nasdaq.
From an industry-wide perspective, this quota increase is a continuation of the results from Nasdaq, MIAX, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) between January and March 2026, when they successively removed the fixed cap of 25,000 contracts and transitioned to a dynamic framework based on trading volume and circulation scale. This marks a milestone in the institutional alignment of crypto ETF options with mature commodity ETFs like gold and silver. In the long term, this move is expected to further promote convergence between Bitcoin ETF derivatives and traditional asset classes in trading mechanisms, but it also raises higher demands on exchanges’ risk control capabilities and cross-market monitoring systems. #比特币ETF期权持仓限额增4倍