At 11:08 Beijing time on September 6, I pulled the Binance Options contract list API once, and these numbers only represent that moment.
First, something unexpected: the gold options (underlying XAUUSDT) currently have 20 listed contracts, and the silver options (XAGUSDT) have 26, with all statuses showing CLOSED_MARKET — it’s not that there are no orders, it’s that the API directly tells you this market is closed. In the same set of data, options for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other products are all TRADING, with none closed. Today is Sunday, and the spot gold and silver markets are not open anyway, so Binance options are following suit, but the perpetual contracts for the same underlyings are still listed as usual on the weekend — on the same exchange, perpetuals and options give two opposite answers to whether the weekend is open for trading.
Next, look at how wide the strike price coverage is. For the gold options, that expiration date is September 11, with only 10 strike prices, ranging from $4125 to $4875; at the same moment, the gold index price I checked was 4436.70475145, so those 10 strikes only cover 16.9% of the current price range. Silver has 13 strikes, from $59 to $73, with an index price of 66.24411071, covering 21.1%. Bitcoin also happens to have a September 11 expiration, with 26 strike prices from 60000 to 95000; at the same moment, the index price was 79916.42326087, and the covered range is 43.8% of the current price — more than twice that of gold.
When the market is closed and the strike prices are clustered close to the current price, these two things together make it seem more like the market maker for this product is only willing to quote prices near the current price when the market is open. That is my inference; the API itself does not tell us why.
$XAU #BinanceOptions
First, something unexpected: the gold options (underlying XAUUSDT) currently have 20 listed contracts, and the silver options (XAGUSDT) have 26, with all statuses showing CLOSED_MARKET — it’s not that there are no orders, it’s that the API directly tells you this market is closed. In the same set of data, options for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other products are all TRADING, with none closed. Today is Sunday, and the spot gold and silver markets are not open anyway, so Binance options are following suit, but the perpetual contracts for the same underlyings are still listed as usual on the weekend — on the same exchange, perpetuals and options give two opposite answers to whether the weekend is open for trading.
Next, look at how wide the strike price coverage is. For the gold options, that expiration date is September 11, with only 10 strike prices, ranging from $4125 to $4875; at the same moment, the gold index price I checked was 4436.70475145, so those 10 strikes only cover 16.9% of the current price range. Silver has 13 strikes, from $59 to $73, with an index price of 66.24411071, covering 21.1%. Bitcoin also happens to have a September 11 expiration, with 26 strike prices from 60000 to 95000; at the same moment, the index price was 79916.42326087, and the covered range is 43.8% of the current price — more than twice that of gold.
When the market is closed and the strike prices are clustered close to the current price, these two things together make it seem more like the market maker for this product is only willing to quote prices near the current price when the market is open. That is my inference; the API itself does not tell us why.
$XAU #BinanceOptions