ETH is the second crypto asset with a genuinely readable options book, listed in both coin-settled and linear USDC-settled form, on the same venue that carries most crypto options open interest.
It also carries a US-listed spot ETF and therefore an equity-style options book beside the crypto one — the same two-book situation as BTC, with the same rule: they are separate maps.
What is different: the asset pays
ETH can be staked for a yield. Bitcoin has nothing equivalent, and the consequence is not financial trivia — it changes the composition of the holder base.
An asset with a native yield attracts holders whose reason for holding is the yield rather than the price, and staked supply is not immediately available to sell. Both facts shift the balance between what is held and what is liquid, in a direction that has no BTC analogue.
Why that matters for structure
A yield-bearing asset gives its holders an alternative to selling upside for income. In a call-heavy book, covered-call selling is one of the few sources of dealer-long gamma above spot — and where staking provides income without capping upside, the incentive to sell calls for the same purpose is weaker.
That is a plausible structural difference between the two books rather than a measured one, and worth reading as such: a reason the composition might differ, not a claim that it does by a given amount.
The absent piece
ETH has no producer class hedging output. There is no equivalent of miner hedging, so the one reliably non-speculative flow in the BTC book simply is not present here.
Which means ETH’s book is closer to purely speculative positioning — a cleaner read on what participants think, and one lacking the structural anchor BTC has.
How to use both together
BTC and ETH are the only two coins where a full dealer map, an ETF book and deep spot liquidity coexist. Where their maps disagree, the disagreement is informative precisely because so few structural differences separate them — and staking is the largest of the few.