How Will Crypto Markets Move After $16B in Bitcoin Options Expire Today?

Away from Friday's expiry, traders are building large butterfly structures betting on Bitcoin hitting $95,000 by the end of October. Bitcoin options worth roughly $15.9 billion are set to expire on Deribit at 8:00 AM UTC today, covering about 184,000 BTC contracts. The expiry comes with the OG crypto trading near $84,000 after retreating from an eight-month high above $87,000, putting recent price gains against a large options settlement. The Friday Expiry By the Numbers An expiry snapshot earlier in the week showed the Bitcoin batch carried a notional value near $15.9 billion, a max pain price of $75,000 and a put/call ratio of 0.69. Max pain is the strike where the largest amount of options value would expire worthless. A put/call ratio below 1 means there are more call contracts than puts. That can point to a mildly bullish positioning or hedging bias, but it does not establish where Bitcoin will trade after expiry. Deribit CEO Luuk Strijers also posted around the same time that options open interest had climbed above $50 billion, representing about 74% of market open interest, and about one-third of that OI was due to expire during the Friday cycle. Large butterfly trades have ...