Will Today’s Big $6.6B Bitcoin Options Expiry Send Markets Back Down?

This Friday, around 107,000 Bitcoin options contracts will expire, with a notional value of $6.6 billion.

Moreover, it is an end-of-month expiry event, which is much larger than usual end-of-week expiries so there may be a little market volatility.

Bitcoin Options Expiry

Today’s huge tranche of BTC derivatives has a put/call ratio of 0.5, meaning that twice as many long (call) contracts are expiring as shorts (puts). The max pain point, or price at which most losses will be made, is $57,000, which is around $4,000 lower than current spot prices.

Bulls remain in charge of Bitcoin options markets with more than $340 million in open interest at higher strike prices of $70K, $75K, and $80K. Moreover, total OI ramps up to $590 million at $90K and $770 million at the $100K strike price, according to Deribit.

Crypto derivatives tooling provider Greeks Live commented that June had been a tough month for the crypto market, “with a more pessimistic atmosphere as BTC and ETH prices at one point approached the max pain point, which investors thought was impossible to reach.”

June 28 Options Data
107K BTC options are expiring with a Put Call Ratio of 0.5, a Maxpain point of $57,000 and a notional value of $6.6 billion.
1.04M ETH options are expiring with a Put Call Ratio of 0.59, Maxpain point of $3,100 and notional value of $3.6 billion.
Today is… pic.twitter.com/sYVyb3HJnC

— Greeks.live (@GreeksLive) June 28, 2024

It added that, despite the volatility in the market, the implied volatility, a measure of future volatility from expiring contracts, did not show a significant rise, with BTC below 50% IV for all major terms.

In addition to the big batch of Bitcoin options, around a million Ethereum options are expiring today. These have a put/call ratio of 0.59, a max pain point of $3,100, and a notional value of $3.6 billion. This pushed the total crypto options expiration notional value to over $10 billion.

Ethereum ETF news will be clearer early next month, observed Greeks Live, which added that the implied volatility “will be under strong downward pressure for a few days after today’s delivery.”

Crypto Market Impact

Total market capitalization has recovered a little from its dip earlier this week to hover around the $2.4 trillion mark. However, sentiment remains bearish, and markets have been downtrending throughout June.

Bitcoin recovered to top $62,000 on June 28, but it retreated to $61,500 at the time of writing. The asset appears to be consolidating at this level following its dip below $60K on June 24.

Ethereum prices had also recovered from their five-week low of $3,260 on Monday. The asset had returned to $3,430 at the time of writing.