How Markets Will React to $1 Billion Bitcoin Options Expiring Tomorrow

About 17,400 Bitcoin options contracts expire on Friday, October 4. These contracts have a theoretical value of about one billion dollars.

Today’s options expiration is much smaller than last week’s mammoth end-of-month and end-of-quarter event, so it’s unlikely to affect spot markets, which have been pulling back this week .

Expiration of Bitcoin Options

This week’s stretch of Bitcoin options contracts has a put/call ratio of 0.75. This means that slightly longer contracts (calls) than short contracts (puts) expire.

Also, open interest (OI), or the value of open options contracts yet to expire, is still high at the $70,000 strike price at $841 million.

The OI at the $80,000 and $90,000 strike prices has dropped. However, according to Deribit, there is still $968 million at the $100,000 strike price.

Crypto derivatives provider Greeks Live shared its outlook on the markets earlier this week, stating that “crypto markets are entering a shakeout” before adding:

“Quarterly delivery is over, major maturity IVs (implied volatility) are at lower levels and there is still a lot of downside pressure this week, historically October is generally a better month and now is a good opportunity to buy”.

Bitcoin Investment Essentials, a look at this week’s top events (9/30-6/10)

The most important macro data this week is Friday’s unemployment rate and non-farm payrolls data, and now the windy A-share market compared to the US stock market is obviously much less. ..

— Greeks.live (@GreeksLive) October 1, 2024

In addition to the current Bitcoin options, there are about 119,000 Ethereum options about to expire, with a notional value of $282 million and a put/call ratio of 0.68. That brings the total expiration event to about $1.3 billion.

Crypto market outlook

Crypto markets declined another 2% on the day, with total market capitalization falling to $2.21 trillion, its lowest level since mid-September.

In addition, markets have shed $200 billion since the beginning of this month, dispelling hype of an “Uptober” to follow “Slumptember.”

Bitcoin hit an intraday low of $59,950 in the late afternoon on Thursday, but rallied to recapture $61,000 during Friday morning’s Asian trading session. However, that too looked precarious, with the asset falling again at the time of writing.

Ethereum prices mirrored the action, falling near $2,300 before a marginal recovery to $2,370 at the time of writing. ETH is down 10% over the past seven days as the FUD wave returns.

Most altcoins were in the red this Friday morning, as they have been for most of this week.

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