Cash-Secured Puts on IBIT: How Selling Premium Lowers Your Cost Basis Every Time

A Realistic Alternative to Speculation

If you’ve been in markets long enough, you know there are no shortcuts. Yet everywhere you look, the trading world promotes “get rich quick” ideas, screenshots of 300% gains, promises of moonshot trades, or claims of one strategy that will change everything.

The truth is less exciting, but far more useful: wealth comes from steady, realistic, repeatable returns.

That’s where cash-secured puts come in. They aren’t glamorous. They won’t give you a story to brag about on social media. But they can do something far more valuable: allow you to buy assets you want to own, like bitcoin through BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), at significantly cheaper prices, while collecting income every step of the way.

Since May 1st, The Income Foundation has been doing exactly that. In just four months, our IBIT trades alone have produced $2.78 per share in premium, lowering our break-even at the $60 strike to $57.22. Annualized, that’s about a 14% return on secured cash, slow, steady, and realistic.

This article will show you how the strategy works, why IBIT is a perfect fit, and why focusing on consistency instead of hype is what separates disciplined traders from speculators.

Cash-Secured Puts: The Basics

A cash-secured put is one of the simplest option strategies:

1. You sell a put option at a strike price where you’d genuinely want to own the stock or ETF.

2. You set aside enough cash to buy the shares if assigned (hence, “cash-secured”).

3. You immediately collect a premium.

At expiration, two outcomes are possible:

• If IBIT stays above your strike: the put expires worthless. You keep the premium, and no shares are bought.

• If IBIT falls below your strike: you’re assigned, buying IBIT at your chosen price, minus the premium you already collected.

It’s essentially a smarter limit order. Instead of waiting for an order to fill while your cash sits idle, you get paid while you wait.

Why IBIT Is an Ideal Candidate

Not every underlying makes sense for this strategy. IBIT does, for three reasons:

1. Liquidity
   Options on IBIT trade actively, with tight spreads that make execution efficient.

2. Volatility
   Bitcoin is one of the most volatile assets in the world. While that scares many investors, it means premiums are rich, exactly what option sellers want.

3. Accessibility
   IBIT is an ETF, not a crypto wallet. That makes assignment straightforward for brokerage accounts. Investors get bitcoin exposure in a familiar, regulated format.

That combination, liquidity, volatility, accessibility, is why IBIT has been such a natural fit for our income strategy.

Our IBIT Trade Record

Since May, here are the IBIT cash-secured puts executed in The Income Foundation:

Total Premium Collected: $2.78 per share, or $278 per contract.

The Break-Even Advantage

Here’s the key point most traders overlook: every dollar of premium lowers your effective cost basis.

With $2.78 collected so far, if we’re assigned at the $60 strike, our cost basis isn’t $60. It’s:

$60 - $2.78 = $57.22

That means our break-even is already 14% below where IBIT was trading when we began selling puts.

And with every new cycle of put selling, that break-even keeps falling.

This is the hidden edge:

• Buy-and-hold investors pay market prices.

• Limit-order investors wait without income.

• Put sellers get paid up front, and eventually own at discounts others can’t match.

Annualized Context: Small Wins Add Up

In four months, our IBIT puts returned about 4.6% on secured cash. Annualized, that’s roughly 13.8% per year.

No fireworks. No moonshots. Just steady, realistic gains.

Compare that with buy-and-hold IBIT investors, who earned almost nothing in the same period. We’ve generated income, lowered cost basis, and positioned ourselves for discounted ownership, all without needing bitcoin to rally.

This is why slow, steady compounding matters. Small trades, 1-2% per month, can add up to double-digit annual returns that are both achievable and sustainable.

Why This Matters in a “Get-Rich-Quick” World

Today’s market culture is dominated by speed. Traders online flaunt 300% option gains or crypto moonshots. The problem is those results are rare, fleeting, and usually come with risks never mentioned.

Cash-secured puts are the opposite:

• 1-2% per month.

• Predictable probabilities.

• Defined risks.

• Realistic income you can actually plan around.

That’s the real edge. Not the hope of windfall gains, but the ability to map out expected income, set aside capital, and execute consistently.

How Premium Compounds Over Time

The longer you apply this discipline, the better the numbers look.

• After four months: $2.78 per share collected.

• After one year: $8-$12 per share is realistic with continued cycles.

• Effective break-even keeps dropping, potentially 15-20% below market over time.

Every cycle either delivers cash income or lowers your future cost basis. This is how professional traders think: not in single trades, but in systems that compound advantages over months and years.

Portfolio Context

IBIT is one sleeve of a broader approach. Across all trades since May 1st, The Income Foundation has generated $820+ per contract in income. Against a $36 subscription cost, that’s already more than 20 years of the service paid for.

The point isn’t marketing. It’s to show that consistent, realistic results are possible when you respect probabilities, manage risk, and repeat the process.

Lessons for Traders

1. Discipline beats prediction. We didn’t need to guess bitcoin’s direction.

2. Small wins compound. 1–2% per month translates into double-digit annualized returns.

3. Discount entries are the edge. Our break-even is already $57.22 and falling.

4. Steady beats flashy. A system you can plan around is worth more than sporadic big winners.

IBIT Snapshot

• Premium Collected (May-Aug): $2.78 per share

• Target Strike: $60

• Effective Break-Even: $57.22

• Annualized Return Pace: ~13.8%

• Portfolio Total Premium Since May: $820+ per contract

Final Word

Bitcoin will always attract speculators. IBIT gives access to both the reckless and the disciplined. The difference lies in the approach.

Cash-secured puts let you:

• Get paid while you wait.

• Buy what you want at significantly cheaper prices.

• Build returns you can actually plan around.

Since May, our IBIT trades have shown exactly that: lower break-even, consistent income, and a pace of returns that compound into something real.

In a world shouting “get rich quick,” this strategy offers something quieter but more powerful: realistic, steady, and repeatable results.

👉 Join The Income Foundation today and see firsthand how a rules-based Wheel strategy can turn even volatile markets into a consistent source of income.

Probabilities over predictions,

Andy Crowder

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