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You don't have to play the whole stock market, and to increase leverage, you can use puts/calls.
Bitcoin itself trades more like an option (on a new financial system, I guess).
Trading options on stocks/indices is a 90% sure fire loser over the long term. It was similar even 30 years ago when the market was human traded (mostly), but it is far more so now.
The reason is that options have an expiry date. The 'market' will always conspire to extract the greatest amount from holders of options at expiry. The vast majority of traders still hold to expiry, and always will. For instruments with no expiry date, the market imposes a time holding cost (above and beyond the price of initial purchase).
There would be no market at all if this were not the case, because the expiries and holding costs are what fund the costs and profits of the market makers/whole financial machine/industry.
BTC (like gold ) could be called an option , but it is without expiry date and holding cost.