Market Says ‘Meh’ as Largest Ever Bitcoin Options Expire

Following what was hyped as “the largest options expiry in history” for bitcoin (BTC) Friday morning, little has changed in the bitcoin spot market so far, where prices today have hovered mostly in the range of USD 9,100 to 9,200.

Zooming in on the shorter timeframes, however, it is clear that a brief sell-off occurred just ahead of the options expiry, followed by a recovery – all largely within the said USD 100 trading range.

The trading day thus turned out to largely follow the “dump and pump” pattern some on Twitter expected, judging from a poll created by Su Zhu, CEO of crypto investment firm Three Arrows Capital.

The latest bitcoin options contracts expired this morning at 8:00 UTC on Deribit, and amounted to BTC 74,000, or approximately USD 675 million notional value, the exchange announced on Twitter.

Deribit is by far the largest bitcoin options exchange by open interest, followed by the more institutionally-focused CME.

This massive bitcoin options expiration day comes after the price of bitcoin saw several rounds of sharp selling on both Wednesday and early Thursday this week. The selling pressure brought the spot price of bitcoin down from a level of around USD 9,650 on Wednesday morning, to a low just north of the USD 9,000 mark early Thursday morning UTC time.

The price then went on to recover slightly before once again selling off as today’s options expiry approached.

According to data from Skew, a provider of crypto derivatives analytics, the current put-to-call ratio of bitcoin options is sitting right below 1. What this means is that here is a roughly equal amount of capital being allocated to bullish call options as to the bearish put options, which obviously also contributes to stability in the spot market.

At pixel time (14:48 UTC), BTC is trading at USD 9,103. It dropped 1.87% in the last 24 hours and 3.15% in the last 7 days.