Will Today’s Bitcoin Options Expiry Send Markets Lower?

There are around 20,000 Bitcoin options expiring with a notional value of $1.35 billion. However, today’s expiry event is much smaller than in previous weeks, so market impact is likely to be minimal.

Nevertheless, a large Bitcoin options expiry event will occur on June 28, with $6.7 billion in notional value derivatives expiring.

Bitcoin Options Expiry

Today’s BTC contracts have a put/call ratio of 0.49 which means twice as many long (call) contracts are expiring as shorts (puts).

The max pain point is $68,500, a little higher than current spot prices. This is the level at which most losses will be made.

The bulls are still dominating BTC derivatives with almost $1 billion in open interest at the $100,000 strike price, according to Deribit. $75,000 and $80,000 strike prices have also attracted a lot of OI with $723 million and $807 million respectively.

Crypto derivatives tooling provider Greeks Live commented that despite the big macroeconomic data week in the United States, “the crypto market underperformed, the mainstream coins as a whole fell, and the altcoins are even more down.”

“There are fewer hot spots in the market recently, and the market is relatively quiet.”

14 June options delivery data
20,000 BTC options expired with a Put Call Ratio of 0.49, a maximum pain point of $68,500 and a notional value of $1.35 billion.
200,000 ETH options expired with a Put Call Ratio of 0.36, a max pain of $3,600 and a notional value of $710 million.… pic.twitter.com/42ruZLLtqc

— Greeks.live (@GreeksLive) June 14, 2024

It added that short-term implied volatility for Bitcoin and Ethereum has fallen below 50% and 60% respectively. However, Ethereum ETF news later this month could impact market sentiment and volatility.

In addition to today’s batch of Bitcoin options, 200,000 Ethereum options expired with a put/call of 0.36, a max pain point of $3,600, and a notional value of $710 million.

Crypto Market Outlook

There has been little change in total market capitalization over the past 24 hours with it remaining at $2.57 trillion.

However, markets have been in retreat with a 7.5% decline over the past ten days.

Bitcoin was hovering around $67,000 in early trading on Friday following a fall from around $69,500 earlier this week. Analysts pointed at Bitcoin miner profit taking contributing to the declines.

Chart guru Peter Brandt highlighted levels of support should markets fall further.

Chart of interest – Bitcoin $BTC
Sometimes the most obvious interpretations of a chart work out, most of the time the charts morph. But the most obvious is this:
Break through 65,000, then mkt goes to 60,000
Break through 60,000 mkt goes to 48,000 pic.twitter.com/JsXXVx2EhV

— Peter Brandt (@PeterLBrandt) June 13, 2024

Ethereum has taken a bigger hit this week falling 7.7% to a four-week low of $3,434 on June 13 before recovering slightly to $3,515 at the time of writing.