How Will Markets React to $3B Crypto Options Expiring Today?

Around 38,000 Bitcoin options contracts will expire on Friday, Feb. 13, with a notional value of roughly $2.5 billion. This event is a little larger than last week’s expiry.

Crypto markets remain in bear market territory, losing around $125 billion since the start of the week, as sentiment plunges and the retail and institutional exodus continues.

Bitcoin Options Expiry

This week’s batch of Bitcoin options contracts has a put/call ratio of 0.76, meaning that there are more expiring calls (longs) than puts (shorts). Max pain is around $75,000, 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 $60,000 and is now mounting up at $50,000, which has over $1 billion at these strike prices on Deribit as bearish bets increase. Total BTC options OI across all exchanges has been climbing this month and is at $36.6 billion.

Derivatives analyst ‘Laevitas’ said there was a “bear put spread” on Deribit, which involves buying a higher strike put and selling a lower strike put with the same expiry.

“Put options continue to dominate the market, with over $1 billion in BTC put options traded today, accounting for 37% of the total volume,” commented Greeks Live this week, which added that the majority of these are “out-of-the-money options priced between $60,000 and $65,000.”

In addition to today’s batch of Bitcoin options, around 217,000 Ethereum contracts are also expiring, with a notional value of $406 million, max pain at $2,150, and a put/call ratio of 0.89. Total ETH options OI across all exchanges is around $7 billion. This brings the total notional value of crypto options expiries to around $2.9 billion.

Spot Market Outlook

Total market capitalization is down another 1.5% on the day at $2.34 trillion as the sell-off continues. Bitcoin is weakening again, falling to just above $65,000 in late trading on Thursday and trading just above $66,000 during Friday morning’s Asian session.

Analysts are mostly bearish, with many predicting a bottom near or below its realized price of $55,000. Ether remains weak below $2,000, hitting $1,900 in an intraday low. Continued weakness for BTC will drag ETH even further down over the coming weeks.

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