Will Markets React When $1.8B Bitcoin Options Expire Today?

Around 21,700 Bitcoin options contracts will expire on Friday, Jan. 23, with a notional value of roughly $1.8 billion. This event is slightly smaller than last week’s, as derivatives trading remains sluggish.

Crypto markets have lost around $200 billion since the start of the week, amid escalating trade wars, Japanese bond turmoil, and delays in US crypto legislation.

Bitcoin Options Expiry

This week’s batch of Bitcoin options contracts has a put/call ratio of 0.75, meaning that there are more expiring calls (longs) than puts (shorts). Max pain is around $92,000, according to Coinglass, which is above current spot prices, so many 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 $100,000, which has $2 billion at this strike price on Deribit. There remains around $1.1 billion in OI at $85,000 and $90,000, as bearish bets mount.

Total BTC options OI across all exchanges has been climbing since the beginning of the year and is at $36 billion.

“Expiry positioning is tightly clustered around key strikes, keeping spot sensitive into the cut,” stated Deribit before adding:

In addition to today’s batch of Bitcoin options, around 118,000 Ethereum contracts are also expiring, with a notional value of $346 million, max pain at $3,250, and a put/call ratio of 0.86. Total ETH options OI across all exchanges is around $8 billion.

This brings the total notional value of crypto options expiries to around $2.1 billion.

Spot Market Outlook

Total market capitalization is down 1% on the day, as all gains made so far this year were wiped out in this red week.

Bitcoin fell to an intraday low of $88,560 before recovering to reclaim $89,500 at the time of writing, but it failed to reach $90,000 over the past 24 hours, suggesting the sellers are strengthening.

Ether prices are also bearish, with a fall below $3,000 and no attempts to reclaim the psychological level over the past 12 hours. It currently trades at $2,950.

Altcoins were mostly in the red, shedding a further 2% to 3% on the day as fear and uncertainty persist.

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