ETH — the Grayscale Ethereum Staking Mini ETF — has just posted its biggest weekly move in months, and the options market is registering something close to maximum bullishness in response.
The price story is the headline this week. ETH closed at $23.52, up 29% on the week and 33% over the past month. That kind of move compresses put demand fast. The put/call ratio has collapsed to 0.19 — barely above its 52-week low of 0.16 — and sits 2.6 standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.36. Over most of the past two months the PCR held in a steady band around 0.39–0.40, reflecting balanced hedging activity. That band broke sharply this week as call volume dominated. Traders are not buying downside protection right now; they are leaning hard into the upside.
Short positioning has continued the retreat documented in recent notes, and the lending market confirms shorts are not fighting the tape. Short interest dropped 35% in a single session on August 25 to 1.62% of the free float — the lowest level in the 30-day window, and roughly half the 2.7 million share peak seen in late July. The monthly picture shows a 45% decline in shares short. Borrowing is cheap at 0.58% annualised, barely changed over the past month, and availability has expanded dramatically. With 14.9 million shares still available to borrow against just 1.2 million borrowed, availability is running at 1,499% — the loosest the lending pool has been in the entire 30-day history. There is no squeeze mechanics at play here. Shorts simply exited, and they did so as the price ran.
The ORTEX short score has eased alongside, now at 32.6 — down from a peak of 40.97 on August 24 and back toward the lower end of its recent range. A lower short score reflects both the lighter positioning and the looser borrow conditions. The combined score of 32.5 tells a similar story: this is not a high-conviction short setup by any standard measure, and the week's price action has moved further against anyone who tried to rebuild positions mid-month.
Worth watching from here is whether the PCR begins to normalise back toward its historical band around 0.39. A sustained reading below 0.20 is unusual for this instrument — it has only visited that level briefly this year — and any rotation back into put buying would signal that some of the week's enthusiasm is fading at the margin. The short interest daily volatility over recent weeks, with positions swinging 20–35% in single sessions, also suggests this is a data point to track carefully rather than read as a settled trend.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
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