Trading has now been confirmed live after the contract was listed last week. USDC collateral does not remove the separate effects of funding and mark-price rules.
Bitcoin’s expected price swings are now a tradable market on Hyperliquid. Volmex announced on September 29 that perpetual futures linked to its BVIV index were live. Offered through Markets by Kinetiq, the contract uses USDC collateral and allows leverage of up to five times.
Markets deployed the product in partnership with Volmex and Perps.inc. Instead of buying Bitcoin, traders take a position on whether expected BTC volatility over the next 30 days will rise or fall. A gain in Bitcoin’s price therefore does not require BVIV to rise with it.
Listing and trading did not start together
BVIV had already appeared in the news last week. CoinDesk’s September 21 report, updated the following day, said the futures had been listed but that trading would begin in the coming days after a scheduling adjustment. Volmex’s announcement today says the market is now live.
“BVIV Index perpetual futures are now live on @HyperliquidX.”
Volmex’s official BVIV trading announcement and short video
The post loads from X when you open it.
A position on expected swings, not price direction
According to Volmex’s index description, BVIV combines options and futures data to measure Bitcoin’s forward-looking, 30-day expected volatility. The index updates every second. It cannot be bought and held in a wallet: the tradable instrument is a derivative linked to that measure.
A position anticipating higher volatility is different from a position anticipating a higher Bitcoin price. Expected volatility can rise while the price falls if the market anticipates large swings. Conversely, a steadier price rally can accompany lower expected volatility. Entry price, funding payments and fees also affect the contract’s profit or loss.
30 days is not the contract’s expiry. It describes the index’s forward-looking window. BVIV is a perpetual product, with no Bitcoin delivery or automatic expiry after 30 days.
Funding and liquidity matter alongside 5x leverage
The official product documentation, updated September 29, specifies isolated margin only and a $2 million open-interest cap. A one-point move in the contract price produces a gain or loss of 1 USDC per contract before fees and funding.
In the documentation’s example, a long position at maximum 5x leverage can be liquidated after an approximately 11.1% decline in the mark price from entry. For a short, the corresponding increase is 9.1%. These are not percentage changes in Bitcoin’s price. The calculation also excludes funding, fees and any margin added later.
Funding is settled hourly. It includes both the market’s premium relative to the index and a carrying-cost component calculated from the volatility curve. Thin order books, a mark price that diverges from the index, or interruptions in the data feed can also affect outcomes. The market offers direct volatility exposure, but monitoring it involves different factors from holding BTC itself.
Other BTC market products and network developments appear in our Bitcoin news coverage.
