Bitcoin is trading at $64,364 as of 8:00 am ET on 29 July. That number is the setup. The question a three-outcome market on the August close asks is: where does Bitcoin finish on 31 August?
Two obvious levels bracket the trade. Above $70,000 is the bull case. Below $60,000 is the bear case. Everything between is the muddled middle. On a two-outcome market you have to pick one side. On a three-outcome market you can price the middle directly.
This piece walks through how to price the three legs using today's real numbers. It uses CoinGecko for spot, Polymarket for the crowd-sourced view of August, and Kalshi's public daily contracts as a proxy for institutional appetite. No fabricated numbers. Just a method.
The setup on 29 July
Bitcoin opened Wednesday at $63,853 and traded up to $64,244 in the pre-market. By 8:00 am ET it printed $64,364, up 0.75% on the day. That is Yahoo Finance and CoinDesk agreeing on the tape.
Look at the last 30 days. Bitcoin opened July at $58,605 and closed 26 July at $64,390. That is a 9.87% month. The all-time high remains $126,080, set on 6 October 2025. Today's price sits roughly 48% below that high. The 24-hour range on 29 July was $62,444 to $64,432 — narrow. The 24-hour volume was $28.1 billion.
Three anchors matter for pricing an August close market:
- Spot: $64,364
- 30-day realised volatility: roughly 3.5% daily standard deviation, annualised near 55%
- Time to resolution: 32 days (29 July to 31 August, midnight UTC)
Those three inputs are enough to sketch a fair value. The prediction market prices then tell you where the crowd sits relative to that sketch.
Fair value from vol alone
Take the spot at $64,364 and an annualised vol of 55%. Over 32 days, the standard deviation of a lognormal return is roughly 55% × √(32/365) = 16.3%.
That means a one-sigma move is about 16% either way. Two sigma is 32% either way. On lognormal assumptions:
- Above $70,000 = a return of +8.7% or better — about 0.7 sigma. Probability roughly 24%.
- Below $60,000 = a return of -6.8% or worse — about 0.5 sigma. Probability roughly 32%.
- Between $60,000 and $70,000 = the middle. Probability roughly 44%.
That is the vol-implied fair value with no directional bias. Under Yes/No/Maybe framing where Yes = closes above $70K, No = closes below $60K, Maybe = closes in the $60K–$70K middle:
- Yes: 24%
- No: 32%
- Maybe: 44%
The Maybe leg is the largest by construction. That is the whole point of a three-outcome market on a range question: the middle usually is the biggest bucket, and forcing traders to choose Yes or No on a two-outcome book hides that.
What the crowd says
Polymarket's "Bitcoin best month in 2026" market puts August at 11% probability of being the year's best month, on $6,940 volume. That is a low number. The market is saying: August is unlikely to be the standout month of the year.
But "best month of the year" is a different question from "closes above $70K." A month can be positive without being the best. In 2026 so far, July's 9.87% would be a solid contender for best month. For August to unseat that, it needs to deliver more than 9.87% — a move to at least $70,738 from July's close.
So Polymarket's 11% on August-as-best-month is loosely consistent with a low probability of Bitcoin closing above ~$70K. It is not a direct read. It is a sanity check.
Kalshi runs hourly and daily Bitcoin price contracts. The 17 July daily contract on "BTC above $65,000 at 5pm EDT" is public. On the day it resolved around 55% before settling No. That is a rough proxy for how Kalshi traders price near-term binary levels around the current range.
Neither market answers the exact question. But both point in a similar direction: the crowd is not pricing a breakout to $70K as likely, and the base case is a middling August.
Blending the vol model with the crowd
The vol model gives 24% / 32% / 44%. The crowd signal drags the tails toward the middle (best-month odds are low; near-term levels resolve mixed). A trader who trusts the vol model half and the crowd half might land here:
- Yes (above $70K): 20%
- No (below $60K): 30%
- Maybe ($60K–$70K): 50%
That is now a book. If Oddup lists a three-outcome market on the August close and the Maybe leg trades below 40%, there is size on the Maybe side. If Yes trades above 30%, there is size on the No side.
Two things to check before sizing up:
- The Fed catalyst. The FOMC decision lands at 2:00 pm ET on 29 July. A hawkish surprise — dissents for a hike, hawkish balance-sheet language — pushes Bitcoin's expected drift down and widens the No leg. A dovish surprise or a benign statement compresses vol and expands the Maybe leg.
- The 30-day realised vol. This walkthrough uses 55% annualised. If your source has BTC vol closer to 65%, the tails get fatter and the Maybe leg shrinks. Update the model before pricing.
The Yes/No/Maybe advantage on range markets
On a two-outcome market, "closes above $65,000 on 31 August" forces the trader into a binary. Everyone who thinks BTC finishes near $63K or $67K has to guess which side of the $65K line it lands. The market clears somewhere near 50% and provides almost no information.
On a three-outcome market with a defined middle band, the same trader takes Maybe. The market clears at a level that reflects how much probability actually sits in the middle. In this case, roughly half. That is information the binary market cannot express.
The design also handles tail risk cleanly. If Bitcoin runs to $85K on an ETF flow surprise, the Yes leg pays off. If Iran-US tensions crash it to $52K, the No leg pays off. If it grinds sideways in the $60K–$70K band that has defined the last three months, Maybe pays. Every plausible path has a defined settle.
What a live position looks like
Say a trader takes Maybe at 40% (below the blended fair value of 50%). Position size: 2% of paper-trading bankroll. Entry price implies a 2.5x payoff if Bitcoin closes in the $60K–$70K range on 31 August.
Between entry and settlement, several catalysts move the price:
- 29 July FOMC statement — Fed holds unanimously, statement dovish. Bitcoin rallies 2% to $65,600. Maybe leg drifts up to 46%.
- 14 August July CPI — cooler than expected at 3.9%. Bitcoin rallies to $68,400. Maybe leg trades near 55%.
- 25 August Jackson Hole — Warsh signals data-dependence. Bitcoin holds $67,000. Maybe leg at 60%.
- 31 August close — Bitcoin settles at $66,200. Maybe pays.
Under those numbers, the entry at 40% pays 2.5x (implied by 1/0.40). A 2% position returns 5% of bankroll gross. The two-outcome equivalent — "closes above $65K" — would have paid closer to 1.8x at similar entry odds. The three-outcome book compensates for the wider range with a higher edge.
Running the calculation yourself
The vol-implied fair value in this piece takes three inputs. Any trader can replicate it in five minutes with a spreadsheet or a Python one-liner. Here is the recipe:
- Pull spot. CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap for the current price. Take the same timestamp for every input so the model is self-consistent.
- Pull 30-day realised vol. Daily returns for the last 30 days, standard deviation, multiply by √365. Free sources: TradingView, Coin Metrics, or a rolling window off any exchange's OHLCV feed.
- Set the two boundaries. These are the strike prices that define Yes and No. On Bitcoin at $64,364, natural boundaries are $70K (round number, ~9% above) and $60K (round number, ~7% below). If you want the market to be more balanced, tighten the boundaries. Wider boundaries put more weight in Maybe.
- Compute the sigma count. For each boundary, log(strike/spot) divided by the time-scaled vol. That gives you the z-score.
- Read probabilities off a normal CDF. Yes = 1 − N(z_high). No = N(z_low). Maybe = 1 − Yes − No.
In Python:
from math import log, sqrt
from scipy.stats import norm
spot = 64364
sigma_annual = 0.55
days_to_resolve = 32
t = days_to_resolve / 365
sigma_t = sigma_annual * sqrt(t)
z_high = log(70000 / spot) / sigma_t
z_low = log(60000 / spot) / sigma_t
p_yes = 1 - norm.cdf(z_high)
p_no = norm.cdf(z_low)
p_maybe = 1 - p_yes - p_no
print(f"Yes: {p_yes:.0%}, No: {p_no:.0%}, Maybe: {p_maybe:.0%}")
# Yes: 24%, No: 32%, Maybe: 44%Those are the numbers in the earlier section, arrived at directly. Change the vol, the horizon, or the strikes, and the book updates. That is the whole model.
Common pricing mistakes
Three mistakes come up repeatedly when traders first price range markets.
Using implied vol from options blindly. Deribit's Bitcoin implied vol for the August expiry is a useful anchor, but it prices the whole distribution, not the specific range. If Deribit says 65% and realised is 55%, the market is pricing a vol premium. That premium belongs in the No leg (a hedge against a crash), not the Maybe leg.
Forgetting the drift. The lognormal model above assumes zero drift. In a month with a Fed catalyst, the market's expected drift is not zero. If futures markets price a 55% chance of a September hike (as CME does today for the 16 September meeting), the expected drift on Bitcoin for August skews slightly negative. Add a small negative drift to the model and the No leg widens by 2–3 points.
Ignoring liquidity. A theoretical fair value of 20% on the Yes leg is meaningless if the market clears at 15% and you can only buy $500 before the price moves. Always check bid-ask spread and volume before sizing.
Why this matters for prediction traders
Pricing a range market is not intuitive on a two-outcome book. The middle is invisible. A three-outcome book with a clean middle band forces the trader to think in probabilities, not in binary right-or-wrong bets.
The method here is repeatable for any monthly close question on any asset with public spot data and a public vol number. Spot, annualised vol, time to resolution, blend with the crowd signal. The output is a book you can trade against.
Bitcoin's August close is a live example because the setup is genuinely three-way. Neither bull nor bear has a clean thesis at $64K with two weeks of central-bank prints ahead. That is when a three-outcome market earns its keep.
Disclaimer: Oddup content is for educational purposes only. Prediction markets carry risk of loss. Nothing in this article constitutes financial advice. Check jurisdictional rules before trading real-money markets. Prices, volumes, and probabilities cited are as of publication and change continuously.
