Volatility Jump Risk

Definition

Volatility jump risk describes the financial exposure faced by market participants when the underlying price of a cryptocurrency asset experiences a sudden, discontinuous shift rather than a smooth, continuous evolution. In the context of options trading, this phenomenon manifests as a rapid change in implied volatility that invalidates standard pricing models like Black-Scholes, which assume a normal distribution of returns. Traders must account for these non-zero probabilities of extreme price gaps that often result from liquidity shocks or high-impact news events within decentralized finance ecosystems.