Cboe Slams Bitcoin Perpetual Futures and 0DTE Options for Different Risk Profiles

Introduction

Cboe Global Markets has weighed in on the debate surrounding Bitcoin perpetual futures and zero-days-to-expiration options.

Comparison of Risk Profiles

A perpetual future is a futures contract that never expires, allowing traders to hold a leveraged position as long as they keep it funded. A 0DTE option expires the same day it trades, making it a bet on very short-term moves.

Key Findings

Cboe's paper centers on the shape of each product's payoff. Perps offer linear exposure, where every move in the underlying asset translates proportionally into gains or losses, multiplied by whatever leverage the trader chose. Losses can grow just as fast as gains, and a leveraged position can be liquidated when the trader's collateral runs thin. Options behave differently, with payoffs that are convex, meaning the upside can expand much faster than the move in the underlying, while the downside for a buyer is limited to what they paid.

Market Data

The headline statistic: roughly 92% of SPX 0DTE trading happens in defined-risk structures, according to the paper. These are spreads, where a trader buys one option and sells another to set both a maximum gain and a maximum loss. Perps offer no comparable built-in cap.

Case Study

A short perpetual futures position levered 10x returned 9.4%, while an at-the-money SPX 0DTE put returned 404%, and an out-of-the-money put returned 617%. Volume tells its own story, with SPX 0DTE options hitting a record average daily notional volume of $2.3 trillion during Q2 2026.

Conclusion

The comparison between Bitcoin perpetual futures and zero-days-to-expiration options highlights the differences in risk profiles and use cases for each. The findings suggest that 92% of SPX 0DTE trading happens in defined-risk structures, whereas perpetual futures have linear exposure with leverage.