Will Markets React When $2 Billion Bitcoin Options Expire Today?

Around 31,000 Bitcoin options contracts will expire on Friday, July 3, with a notional value of roughly $1.9 billion. This event is much smaller than last week’s big end-of-quarter expiry, so there is unlikely to be any impact on spot markets.

Crypto markets have been flat for most of this week but picked up on Friday, with $70 billion entering the space since Monday as losses have slowed from last month’s rout.

Bitcoin Options Expiry

This week’s batch of Bitcoin options contracts has a put/call ratio of 0.7, meaning that sellers of long (call) contracts slightly outweigh short (put) contract sellers. Max pain is around $61,000, which is close to current spot prices, so some will be in 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 $900 million in OI at $60,000.

Total BTC options OI across all exchanges has fallen to a 16-month low of $26 billion following last week’s big expiry, according to Coinglass.

“Options positioning remains primarily driven by near-term risk management rather than a broad repricing of longer-term expectations.”

In addition to today’s batch of Bitcoin options, around 134,000 Ethereum contracts are expiring, with a notional value of $228 million, a max pain of $1,650, and a put/call ratio of 1.3.

Total ETH options OI across all exchanges is low at around $3.6 billion, its lowest level since January 2023. This brings the total notional value of crypto options expirations to around $1.8 billion.

Spot Market Outlook

Crypto markets are seeing a rare day of green gains across the board this Friday, raising total capitalization to $2.2 trillion.

Bitcoin led the pack, hitting an intraday high of $62,000 on Thursday on weaker-than-expected US jobs data, before falling back to trade at $61,500 on Friday morning in Asia.

Ether fared a little better, reclaiming $1,700 in a 6% daily gain and holding on to those gains over the past 12 hours.

The long weekend in the US means that market activity is likely to be subdued.

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