Pricing Cryptocurrency Options

Abstract

Cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin (BTC), which comprise a new digital asset class, have drawn extraordinary worldwide attention. The characteristics of the cryptocurrency/BTC include a high level of speculation, extreme volatility and price discontinuity. We propose a pricing mechanism based on a stochastic volatility with a correlated jump (SVCJ) model and compare it to a flexible co-jump model by Bandi and Ren\`o (2016). The estimation results of both models confirm the impact of jumps and co-jumps on options obtained via simulation and an analysis of the implied volatility curve. We show that a sizeable proportion of price jumps are significantly and contemporaneously anti-correlated with jumps in volatility. Our study comprises pioneering research on pricing BTC options. We show how the proposed pricing mechanism underlines the importance of jumps in cryptocurrency markets.