The Options Market Is Pricing a 10% Chance Bitcoin Hits $160,000. Here's the Math.

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]The S&P keeps pushing towards record highs. Earnings growth strongest since 2021 and the VIX looks calm, especially the VIX futures markets. But, this rally has been super narrow. Just a handful of names are pushing this thing higher. Even today, Micron up 13% Intel rallying. A handful of names and you you see all these other stocks kind of fluttering around. We're seeing this crazy momentum in just a handful of names. So, do you think that the market will continue to rally or are you thinking things might rotate into something like crypto, maybe Bitcoin and Ethereum? I do think it's interesting when you consider the fact that if you get a rotation out of these strong equity names, maybe you get a continued rotation into crypto with Bitcoin and Ethereum. So, I want to look today at a couple of price points. Some people are calling for a 200k in Bitcoin. Some people are calling for 12k in Ethereum.

[00:01:00]I mean, these probabilities are going to be really low because Bitcoin currently is trading at 80k and Ethereum's trading at 2300. But, I think the thesis is if we were to get a massive rally in Ethereum, it would certainly have to outperform Bitcoin. So, we're going to take a look at IBIT and ETHA, two very popular products, super liquid, super tradable in terms of the price point.

[00:01:24]And we're going to do that right now on this edition of Options Math Chat. So, we're in the tastytrade platform and we're looking at IBIT first, trading around 45. Uh and this is a really nice product. It's a $45 product. There's been 15 million shares traded today already. And I think one of the nice things about uh IBIT specifically is the fact that you can do a lot of different things in here at a $45 price point and 50% IV on the lower end with an IV rank of just 15. There's plenty of premium to be sold here if you wanted to do something like a wheel strategy by selling a put. If you get hit with the shares, you can convert it to a covered call, or you can just sell premium on both sides like I've been doing in IBIT. But if you don't want to be on defined risk, defined risk trades are certainly viable as well in here given the low price point and affordable nature of something like this. But we need to take a look at these probabilities. So, I actually have a short call against 100 shares in IBIT already. But looking at these probabilities, if IBIT were to go up 20%, that's going to translate to IBIT going up to like 55, right? If we have a 10-point rally and we're looking at a $45 price point, 20% is a $9 rally that brings us just shy of this.

[00:02:48]For a Bitcoin translation, if Bitcoin's at 80K and IBIT tracks Bitcoin basically one-for-one from a percentage standpoint, that would bring Bitcoin to 90K.

[00:03:01]Um or 96K, I should say. So, probabilities are super high for that to happen. If you look at the in-the-money probability percentage for December of this year, 26% probability of in-the-money, 55% probability of touch, which is just double the probability of being in the money. So, very strong possibility that we do get that wide range to the upside up to 96 or 100K in Bitcoin. And if we look even further in IBIT, I think this is where you can really get into that upper echelon territory.

[00:03:34]Let's look at December of 2027. Let's see what happens next year or what the probabilities are next year to get up to these astronomical levels.

[00:03:44]And as you can see, the probabilities are pretty flat. If you look at where we just were looking at 55 all the way up to 65. There's not too much of a drift down in probability. So, going from 45 to 65 is about a 50% rally that brings Bitcoin from 80k to 120k close to the all-time highs. But, what about 90?

[00:04:09]So, this is IBIT going from 45 to 90.

[00:04:12]That is a doubling of IBIT's price, which is a doubling of Bitcoin's price.

[00:04:17]That would bring Bitcoin up to 160k just shy of that 200k mark. Interestingly enough, 10% probability that we get there. 10% is not nothing. And a 20% probability of touch there.

[00:04:32]Uh so, about a you know, a pretty high probability all things considered in IBIT for the end of 2027.

[00:04:40]And of course, as you go further out in time, if you even if you go to December of 2028, you're going to see these prob- probabilities substantially higher.

[00:04:48]Uh we go up as high as 80 out here, but a much higher probability of in the money and probability of touch at 80.

[00:04:55]So, I would say over the next year or so, the probabilities are are pretty substantial.

[00:05:01]Uh they're still low, but still pretty substantial that we could get up to 160 or closer to 200 in the Bitcoin price.

[00:05:09]Now, Ethereum, uh this one is has been super volatile.

[00:05:14]We saw this thing go uh if we go to ETH A, we saw this thing go from 14 all the way up to 36, back down to 17. So, like this thing has already doubled in price and come back down. So, what is the possibility of getting an ETH A move that's equivalent to a let's call it a 6x in ETH futures, right? Because ETH A uh is going to move in the same kind of lockstep fashion as Ethereum futures. But, we would have to get a 6x price point. I want to see if they even have these up here.

[00:05:50]They've got They actually do, interestingly enough. Okay, so Jan 2027 ETH A multiplying by six is going to be equivalent to Ethereum futures getting to 12K, which was the call that we talked about earlier.

[00:06:05]Probabilities are pretty low, of course, but there's still something here. Like I think it's interesting that at a 55 strike in Jan 2027, these are not zero bid. Uh and a a 55 is a tripling, we'll call it, of ETH A's price. These aren't zero, and I think that says a lot when you consider the fact that we're talking about a 300% increase in ETH A's price, and there is a bid and an ask in a pretty interestingly narrow market here. So, Jan 2027, the pricing is very low in terms of probability, but we do have a bid, which tells us that there's people that think that that is possible.

[00:06:46]And if we go to Jan 2028, same story.

[00:06:50]And uh pretty significant significantly higher probability of being in the money here. If we look at 45 and all the way up to 60, you've got a 5% probability that we get there, 10% probability of touch. And these options are way more bid than the ones we just looked at. Of course, there's a whole 'nother year of speculation happening here, but the fact that these options are a dollar We're dealing with a product that's $17 right now, and we're looking at a 60 strike option that's trading for a dollar. So, I would say these calls seem pretty astronomical. Bitcoin going to 200K, Ethereum outperforming and going to 12K.

[00:07:28]But uh after looking at this, the these probabilities are much higher, and the bids, I think, are much more interesting. Like this is a The fact that these are a dollar, dollar 50 up here, are really interesting to me, and the probabilities are not zero. So, you can clearly see that the market is participating in speculation on these products going up there.

[00:07:48]Uh and I think that, at the very least, is very interesting. You shouldn't just disregard a call of someone saying, "Hey, Bitcoin's going to go to 200K plus." or Ethereum's going to go from 2,300 to 1,200. We've heard our very own Ryan Grace say uh very similar things that the possibility is there, just based on the market cap and where these things could go if we were to get uh a market cap equivalent to, you know, gold or silver or something like that. So, plenty of interesting things happening here. Let me know what you think in the comments below. Please like this video if you like this kind of content. Uh but yeah, let me know. Subscribe to the tastytrade YouTube channel, and we'll see you on the next options math check.