Can $1.3B Bitcoin Options Expiry Shift Market Sentiment on Sept 13? 

Around 23,000 Bitcoin options contracts are due for expiry on Friday, Sept. 13. These derivatives have a notional value of around $1.34 billion.

Today’s options expiry is roughly double the size of last week’s expiry event, so the impact on dampened crypto spot markets may be greater.

Bitcoin Options Expiry

This week’s batch of Bitcoin options contracts has a put/call ratio of 0.86, which means there are slightly more long (call) contracts expiring than shorts (puts) but they are more closely matched.

Open interest, or the value of open contracts yet to expire, is still high at strike prices of $70,000 and $75,000, where there are $627 million and $638 million in OI, respectively, according to Deribit.

Additionally, there is around $751 million in OI at the $90,000 strike price and still a whopping $930 million at the $100,000 strike price.

Crypto derivatives provider Greeks Live observed that the week was “coming to a smooth end, as the US presidential debate and various macro data such as CPI “did not bring significant volatility.”

It added that the Fed rate cut expectations next week are gradually converging. According to the CME Fed Watch tool, the probability of next week’s rate cut of 25 basis points is 87%, and the chance of a rate cut of 50 bps is only 13%.

“Meanwhile, options data shows a significant decline in IVs [implied volatility] across all major terms, with market volatility expectations falling short and the market theme for September still oscillating.”

Sept. 13 Options Data
23,000 BTC options are about to expire with a Put Call Ratio of 0.87, a Maxpain point of $58,000 and a notional value of $1.34 billion.
127,000 ETH options are due to expire with a Put Call Ratio of 0.73, a Maxpain point of $2,400 and a notional value of… pic.twitter.com/tgmBzxZqan

— Greeks.live (@GreeksLive) September 13, 2024

In addition to this week’s Bitcoin options, there are around 126,700 Ethereum options expiring with a notional value of $299 million. These derivatives contracts have a put/call ratio of 0.73, which is very similar to last week’s expiry.

The Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index remains at “fear” (32) as market sentiment is still battered.

Crypto Market Outlook

Total market capitalization has been flat over the past 24 hours at $2.13 trillion.

Bitcoin has whipsawed between an intraday low of $57,300 and around $58,400, failing to make progress above resistance here. However, BTC has recovered from its Sept. 7 low below $54,000 and remains tightly range-bound.

Ethereum is also trading in a tight channel between $2,320 and $2,360, which has been the case for most of this week. The altcoins are mostly in the red, with only XRP and Toncoin (TON) making significant gains of around 3%.