Bmnr Is Down 45% This Year, Yet Options Traders Favor It Over Mstr

What Happened

Options traders have picked a side in the MSTR vs BMNR fight. It is not the side most investors would guess. They keep buying calls on BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) while staying cautious on MicroStrategy (MSTR).

Market Context

The choice looks strange on the surface. BitMine stock has fallen far harder this year, yet the options market still leans bullish on it. The reason lies in the balance sheets.

BitMine sits deep in bullish territory. Its volume ratio is 0.23 and its open interest ratio is 0.35 as of June 15. Both have stayed well below 1.

That conviction has grown. At the start of June, the volume ratio was 0.60 and the open interest ratio 0.37. Fresh call buying has since picked up.

MicroStrategy looks more divided. Its volume ratio has fallen to 0.61 from 0.93 a month ago, so new flow is warming up. Yet its open interest ratio is 0.94, so the standing book still tilts toward puts.

Cheap options help. BitMine’s implied volatility, the market’s forecast for price swings, sits in the 4th percentile of its past year. That percentile shows how often volatility was lower than today, so 4% means calmer readings on only 4% of days.

The puzzle deepens with valuation. MicroStrategy trades at 0.82x mNAV, or market cap divided by the value of its crypto. Below 1.0x means the stock is cheaper than the coins it holds.

At 0.82x, every $1 of MicroStrategy buys about $1.22 of Bitcoin. BitMine trades at 0.97x, almost level with its Ether. On price alone, the Bitcoin treasury looks like the bargain.

Second, a loss. MicroStrategy’s average cost basis, the price it paid per coin, is about $75,527. With Bitcoin near $66,552 at the time of writing, the position sits underwater.

So the discount is not free money. It is the market pricing in leverage, losses, and a treasury that pays nothing. BitMine’s near-NAV price reflects the opposite, a clean and yield-bearing Ethereum treasury. That is why options traders pay up for the pricier stock. They are not just buying a headline discount.

Why It Matters

Options Traders Lean Bullish on BitMine, Cautious on MicroStrategy

BitMine stock is down about 45% in 2026, far more than MicroStrategy’s roughly 17% slide. Even so, traders are positioning for a BitMine rebound. The clearest tell is the put-call ratio, which compares put contracts to call contracts. A reading below 1 means calls outnumber puts, a bullish lean.

Details

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In other words, BitMine’s options are near their cheapest in a year. MicroStrategy sits at the 65th percentile, with lower readings on most days, so its options stay pricier. That gap lets traders bet on a BitMine rebound for less.

A Cheap Bitcoin Treasury Is Not Always a Bargain

A discount is only a bargain if nothing justifies it. Here, three things do.

First, debt. MicroStrategy carries about $8.2 billion of it, while BitMine carries none. Strip the debt out and both trade near 0.96x to 0.97x, so the leverage is the discount.

Third, yield. BitMine stakes most of its Ether and earns a roughly 2.9% staking yield, the reward for helping secure the network. MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin earns nothing.

The next question is whether sharper money agrees.

Smart Money Sides With the Bears on MicroStrategy

On-chain data backs the cautious read. Nansen-labeled smart money, wallets with strong track records, appears to lean short the MicroStrategy proxy.

That group holds a net short of about $4.2 million. Longs total $712,915 against $4.95 million in shorts, a long-short ratio of 0.14x.

The lean matches the put-heavy options book on MicroStrategy. Two separate datasets point the same way. Comparable smart-money data is not available for BitMine, so this read covers MSTR alone.

One detail explains why structure matters this much. Over the recent window, both stocks have nearly stopped tracking their coins. BitMine’s beta to Ether, a measure of how much the stock amplifies the coin’s move, is just 0.06x. MicroStrategy’s to Bitcoin is 0.07x. Daily correlation, how tightly the two move together, is near 0.03.