A conventional option settles in cash. If it finishes in the money by some dollar amount, that dollar amount is what you receive, and the payoff is a straight line above the strike.
An inverse option settles in the underlying coin. The payoff, measured in dollars, is the intrinsic value divided by the coin price — because you receive coins, and each coin is worth whatever it is worth at that moment.
What that does to the shape
It curves it. For a call, price rising increases intrinsic value and simultaneously means each coin received is worth more, so the dollar payoff rises faster than linearly. For a put, price falling increases intrinsic value while each coin received is worth less, so the dollar payoff is damped — the position is fighting itself on the way to being right.
This is the same reflexivity described in coin-margined versus stablecoin-margined, applied to an option payoff instead of to collateral. Same root cause: the asset appears on both sides of the equation.
Why it matters for a dealer map
Because the gamma of an inverse contract is not the gamma of the equivalent cash-settled one, and a map that treats them identically is aggregating quantities that are not the same thing.
It also means dealer hedging of an inverse book has a component that has nothing to do with the option’s directional exposure and everything to do with the settlement currency. Two dealers with identical option positions in inverse and linear contracts do not hedge the same way.
Which contract you are looking at
Crypto venues list both inverse and stablecoin-settled options, sometimes on the same underlying, and the ticker is where the distinction lives — it is not visible in a price chart. Anything computed across a mixture without accounting for settlement type is combining two payoff shapes into one number.
Practically, for anyone reading a map rather than building one: check which contract the numbers came from, exactly as you would check the settlement currency before comparing two figures.