Will $1.4B in Bitcoin Options Expiring Today Move the Market?

Will there be more volatility today prompted by the expiry event?

The end of another week has arrived, which brings another Bitcoin and Ethereum options expiry event as spot markets remain sideways.

Around 23,400 Bitcoin options contracts will expire on Friday, July 10, with a notional value of roughly $1.4 billion. This one is smaller than usual expiry events, so there is unlikely to be any impact on spot markets.

Crypto markets gained earlier in the week but have fallen back since the escalation of military action in Iran and the Federal Reserve’s meeting on Wednesday. Around $30 billion has left the space since Monday.

Bitcoin Options Expiry

This week’s batch of Bitcoin options contracts has a put/call ratio of 0.97, meaning that sellers of long (call) contracts and short (put) contracts are evenly matched. Max pain is around $62,000, which is a little lower than current spot prices, so some will be out of the money on expiry.

Open interest (OI), or the value or number of Bitcoin options contracts yet to expire, remains highest at the $80,000 strike price on Deribit, with $1.1 billion, but short sellers still have $1 billion in OI at $60,000. Total BTC options OI across all exchanges has ticked up a little to $28.7 billion, according to Coinglass.

The current skew profile reflects a “more normalized term structure” while maintaining a persistent downside bias in options pricing, said derivatives provider Greeks Live this week.

“Compared with the sharp front-end dislocations seen earlier in June, risk pricing is now more evenly distributed across maturities, indicating a less fragmented options market.”

This means that overall, the options market reflects ongoing worry about Bitcoin falling more than rising, though the fear is more evenly spread out than before. In addition to today’s small batch of Bitcoin options, around 141,000 Ethereum contracts are expiring, with a notional value of $237 million, a max pain of $1,700, and a put/call ratio of 1.2.

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Total ETH options OI across all exchanges is low at around $4.4 billion. This brings the total notional value of crypto options expirations to around $1.6 billion, a very small event.

Spot Market Outlook

Crypto markets have ticked up a little on Friday morning with total capitalization reaching $2.25 trillion, but they are down slightly on the week.

Bitcoin is up more than 2%, tapping an intraday high of $64,000 during Asian trading on Friday morning. There is heavy resistance just above $64,500, so it needs to break this to push to the next resistance zone around $66,000.

Ether prices made marginal gains but remain below their resistance point at $1,800. The altcoins are seeing small gains after a week in the red, with better performance from Zcash, Stellar, and Canton.