How Will Markets React to $5B Bitcoin Options Expiring Today?

Around 47,000 Bitcoin options contracts will expire on Friday, Oct. 24, and they have a notional value of roughly $5.1 billion.

This expiry event is a little larger than last week’s, but there is unlikely to be any impact on spot markets, which have been mostly sideways in the past several days.

The US government remains in a shutdown, and a delayed September CPI inflation report is due today, which could induce volatility, especially if it comes in hotter than expectations, currently 3.1%.

Bitcoin Options Expiry

This week’s batch of Bitcoin options contracts has a put/call ratio of 1.03, meaning that long contracts and shorts are evenly matched. Max pain is around $114,000, according to Coinglass.

Open interest (OI), or the value or number of Bitcoin options contracts yet to expire, is highest at $120k, $130k, and $140k, which have topped $2 billion at these strike prices on Deribit. There is also over $2 billion in OI at $100k targeted by short sellers.

Total BTC options OI across all exchanges is at an all-time high of $63 billion, according to Coinglass. Bitcoin options open interest just hit an all-time high of $50B on Deribit, the company reported on Friday.

BTC price is holding around $108k, even as BTC futures OI fell 20% to 25% in the past couple of weeks, and Bitcoin options OI now exceeds it by around $40 billion, reported Deribit on Thursday.

Crypto derivatives provider Greeks Live remains predominantly bearish on crypto, with traders expressing frustration over their positions.

In addition to today’s batch of Bitcoin options, around 193,000 Ethereum contracts are also expiring, with a notional value of $749 million, max pain at $3,950, and a put/call ratio of 0.78. Total ETH options OI across all exchanges is around $15 billion. This brings Friday’s combined crypto options expiry notional value to around $5.8 billion.

Spot Market Outlook

The crypto market capitalization has increased by 1.8% over the past 24 hours to reach $3.8 trillion.

Bitcoin (BTC) has led the move with a brief spike above $111,000 in late trading on Thursday before retracing slightly on Friday morning. ETH, SOL, and BNB have posted impressive gains.

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