[Gate Research Institute: Market Downside Risks Have Not Cleared, Funds Flowing into Ethereum Options for Long Volatility Strategies] According to observations by Gate Research Institute, approximately $9.8 billion worth of BTC and ETH options are set to expire this Friday. Currently, the implied volatility (IV) for BTC and ETH stands at 38% and 54%, respectively, with ETH IV having dropped to an extremely low level of the 1.6% percentile over the past year. Over the past week, BTC and ETH skew have remained negative, indicating a preference for downside protection. Short-term hedging sentiment has significantly increased, while long-term risk pricing remains stable. In terms of block trades, over the past 24 hours in the BTC and ETH options markets, block trades have been dominated by bearish spreads. The largest structure is BTC sell BTC-30JAN26-85000-P, with a total transaction volume of approximately 500 BTC and net premium income of about $180,000. For ETH, a long volatility strategy was executed with ETH-6FEB26-3150-C, totaling approximately 2,000 ETH and a net premium expenditure of about $90,000. Recently, Gate introduced a convenient options trading tool—Combination Strategy Order Placement—to help users efficiently respond to various market conditions such as narrow-range fluctuations, gradual rises, or gradual declines. This feature supports multiple common multi-leg options strategies, such as spreads and straddles, allowing users to create multi-leg options in one go and intuitively display overall costs, profit and loss structures, and risk exposures in a combined format. Users can quickly construct and manage multi-leg strategies without operating leg by leg, significantly reducing operational complexity and improving trading efficiency.