In Solana, Institutions Expect Further Decline: 4 out of 5 Positions are Sales! - Coin Bulletin

Solana (SOL), before the upcoming major unlocking event, investors turned predominantly to put options on Deribit as it lost value.

Solana's (SOL) price has dropped by 46 percent in the last five weeks, falling to 160 dollars. This decline was triggered by both a slowdown in on-chain activity and expectations for a major lock-up release on March 1st.

Investors sought to hedge against the decline by turning to put options on the Deribit exchange in this uncertain environment.

High demand for Put options

Last week, the SOL block transactions on Deribit reached a nominal value of 32.39 million dollars, constituting approximately 25% of the total 130.74 million dollars worth of options transactions. According to Amberdata, this ratio was recorded as the second highest block transaction ratio to date. 80% of the block transactions consisted of put contracts, with this ratio recorded as 40% for Bitcoin (BTC) and 37.5% for Ethereum (ETH) respectively.

Block transaction generally refers to movements known as 'whale' by large investors and is carried out through private negotiation of a large amount of contracts between two parties. Such transactions are executed over-the-counter (OTC) with minimum impact on market prices and then recorded on the exchange.

According to Lin Chen, Head of Business Development at Deribit Asia, on **March 1st, 11.2 million SOL tokens ( worth approximately 2.07 billion dollars) will be unlocked. This amount represents **2.29% of the total supply and consists mainly of FTX assets and a foundation sale. This situation could lead to significant volatility in the market as it corresponds to 59% of the daily spot trading volume.

Chen said, “Unlocking a lock of this size can create volatility in the market. Therefore, many investors are trying to protect themselves against possible price decreases with put options.” Chen also noted that many investors will try to achieve good returns by positioning themselves “long volatility” during this process.

As a result, both the decrease in on-chain activity of Solana and the upcoming major unlocking have led investors to be cautious. In particular, the interest of large investors in put options indicates that the market will be vulnerable to fluctuations in the coming period.