Bybit launched Odds, a new fixed-return trading product that lets users take positions on bitcoin and ether prices with predetermined outcomes and no liquidation risk, the exchange announced this week. The product removes the two features that define crypto derivatives, leverage and forced liquidation, and replaces them with a simple binary structure: pick a direction or level, know the payout in advance, wait for the outcome.
The launch lands at a curious moment for derivatives. Liquidation data from Coinglass puts $1.72 billion in long positions at risk below $74,860 on bitcoin and $832 million in shorts above $82,084, numbers that show how much leverage is stacked around current prices. Bitcoin traded near $76,000 on Wednesday after the Senate blocked the CLARITY Act in a 49-50 vote and left a Fed rate hike priced at 94 percent. The failed cloture vote alone triggered roughly $770 million in liquidations and pushed bitcoin down 5 percent in a session. A product that cannot be liquidated is, in effect, an answer to weeks like this one.
How the product works
With Odds, a trader allocates capital to a price prediction, for example that bitcoin closes above a stated level by a deadline, and the return is fixed at the moment the position opens. There is no margin call, no funding rate, and no forced close if the price moves against the position before expiry. The exchange described it as expanding its lineup of trading instruments for users who want exposure to price direction without managing a leveraged book.
That description puts Bybit in a growing category that blurs the line between trading and betting. Prediction markets such as Polymarket and Kalshi have pulled retail volume away from traditional crypto derivatives in some regions, and Polymarket’s odds on US crypto legislation became a widely quoted market signal during the CLARITY Act fight, falling to 12.5 percent hours before the Senate vote. A crypto exchange offering fixed-outcome contracts on its own assets keeps that flow in-house rather than losing it to external platforms.
Fit with the rest of the exchange
Bybit is the second-largest exchange by 2025 spot volume share at 8.1 percent, down 13.7 percent year over year, though its CoinGecko trust score of 9 out of 10 sits below the 10/10 held by rivals including Bitget, OKX, Gate and Coinbase. LiquidityRank places its order-book depth 12th among tracked exchanges with a spread near 288 basis points on sampled pairs, well behind Kraken’s 0.89 or OKX’s 0.93, so product diversification is one way to compete without winning on spreads. The exchange already runs a copy-trading product and, per earlier announcements, US stock options alongside crypto and CFD markets covering gold, forex, commodities and indices.
The risk profile of fixed-return products is different from perpetuals in ways users may not immediately grasp. The maximum loss is capped at the stake, which is friendlier than a leveraged wipeout, but the payout odds are set by the house, so pricing matters more than in an open market where counterparties compete. Regulators in several jurisdictions treat fixed-outcome products closer to gambling than to derivatives, and the CFTC has warned prediction-market platforms against offering what it called American-style gambling odds. Bybit has not detailed where Odds will be available, and availability questions have dogged offshore exchanges before: MEXC appears on the European securities regulator’s non-compliant register following a Dutch AFM decision and lacks MiCA authorization.
Why exchanges are chasing simple products
The move follows a pattern across the industry. Bitget launched US stock options in July, calling itself the first crypto exchange to offer them. Robinhood Chain, ten weeks after launch, hit $1.88 billion in daily DEX volume on the back of tokenized stocks before daily revenue fell more than 90 percent from its early September 7 peak. Hargreaves Lansdown opened nine bitcoin and ether ETNs from BlackRock and others to two million UK investors this week, reversing its own public warning against crypto from last October. SoFi partnered with Payward to plug Kraken’s crypto infrastructure into its banking app. Retail-facing products are converging: brokers want crypto, crypto exchanges want stocks and fixed outcomes, and everyone wants the user who finds a perpetual futures screen intimidating.
The economics are unproven. Robinhood Chain’s revenue collapse shows launch volume does not guarantee sustainable take rates, and Pump.fun’s buybacks of more than $400 million in PUMP tokens since July have done little for a price still 83 percent below its all-time high. A fixed-return product generates revenue through spread rather than funding or liquidation fees, so its success depends on steady repeat volume rather than volatile bursts around news events.
There is also a behavioral question. Capped-loss products can encourage larger stakes than users would take with visible margin, the same dynamic regulators cite with binary options, which were banned for retail clients in the UK and EU years ago after widespread losses. Whether Bybit structures Odds with loss limits, cooling-off periods or warnings will matter to any future regulatory review, and the announcement so far says nothing on that front.
For now, Odds is a bet by Bybit that a meaningful slice of traders want to know their worst case before they click buy. In a market that just watched three quarters of a billion dollars evaporate on a single Senate vote, that pitch has an audience.