Can Today’s Big $5B Crypto Options Expiration Event Change Market Momentum?

About 62,000 Bitcoin options contracts expire on Friday, August 30. They have a theoretical value of about 3.65 billion dollars.

Today’s options expiration event is important because it is at the end of the month. However, spot markets are rarely affected by these derivatives developments which serve more as an indication of market sentiment.

Expiration of Bitcoin Options

This week’s big batch of Bitcoin options contracts has a put/call ratio of 0.59, meaning there are almost twice as many long contracts (calls) expiring as short contracts (puts).

Open interest, or the number of securities in contracts that have not yet expired, remains high at strike prices of $70,000 and $75,000, according to Deribit.

Also, there is about $793 million in OI at the $90,000 strike price and still $987 million at the $100,000 strike price.

Bitcoin OI by Expiry. Source: Deribit

Crypto derivatives provider Greeks Live commented that markets have fallen in line with Nvidia shares despite the company beating Wall Street expectations in its earnings report this week.

In addition to Bitcoin options expiring today, there are $1.35 billion in notional value Ethereum contracts expiring. The 536,000 contracts have a put/call ratio of 0.50, which means there are exactly twice as many long contracts as there are short contracts. The OI is higher at the $4,000 strike price, which has $373 million in open contracts.

Greeks Live also acknowledged all the Ethereum FUD that has infected the market.

“All the ETH Fud lately, and it’s true that ETH has been weak for a long time and the practical applications have been lackluster. But the market seems to be too pessimistic and the options market has seen several block options fall in the last couple of days.

Crypto market outlook

Crypto markets have declined this week, with total market capitalization down around $200 billion. At the time of writing, the digital asset market was worth $2.17 trillion after a 1.5% drop on the day.

Bitcoin hit an intraday high of $61,000, but was strongly rejected by resistance there, retreating to $59,000 during the Asian trading session on Friday morning.

Ethereum prices closed at $2,600, but also failed to break the resistance, falling back to $2,525 at the time of writing.

Altcoins were mixed, but mostly flat the day after a week or pullback.

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