Will Markets Keep Falling When $4.8B Bitcoin Options Expire Today?

Around 44,000 Bitcoin options contracts will expire on Friday, Oct. 17, and they have a notional value of roughly $4.8 billion.

This expiry event is a little larger than last week’s, but there is unlikely to be any impact on spot markets, which have been mostly in decline this week.

The US government remains in shutdown, and trade tariff tensions still loom, but the longer-term backdrop of ending quantitative tightening and increasing liquidity through rate cuts remains bullish for crypto.

Bitcoin Options Expiry

This week’s batch of Bitcoin options contracts has a put/call ratio of 0.83, meaning that there are slightly more long contracts expiring than shorts, as the bears take control. Max pain is around $116,000, according to Coinglass.

Open interest (OI), or the value or number of Bitcoin options contracts yet to expire, is highest at $140,000, which has reached $2.2 billion at this strike price on Deribit. There is also over $2 billion in OI at $125k and $120k, but short sellers have targeted $110k, $108k, and even $95k as popular strike prices with over $1.3 billion in OI at each level. Total BTC options OI across all exchanges is around $61 billion, very close to an all-time high, according to Coinglass.

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Bitcoin options market data indicates that the share of bearish trades has risen markedly, reported crypto derivatives provider Greeks Live on Thursday.

“More than $1.15 billion, or about 28 % of total options volume, has flowed into shallow out‑of‑the‑money (OTM) puts expiring this week and this month, with the $10,400 to $10,800 strike range being the most active.”

“The group is cautiously bearish with expectations of further downside, though some members see potential bounce opportunities near lower support levels,” it stated in a separate post.

In addition to today’s batch of Bitcoin options, around 251,000 Ethereum contracts are also expiring, with a notional value of $985 million, max pain at $4,100, and a put/call ratio of 0.81. Total ETH options OI across all exchanges is around $15.4 billion. This brings Friday’s combined crypto options expiry notional value to around $5.7 billion.

Spot Market Outlook

Total market capitalization is ending the week in the red, declining 2.7% on the day to $3.77 trillion. Crypto markets are now down almost 14% since their peak on Oct. 7.

Bitcoin led the losses, dumping to support at $108,000 during late trading on Thursday, and there have been few signs of a recovery during the Friday morning Asian trading session.

Ether also weakened, failing to hold above $4,000 and falling back to $3,900 at the time of writing. Meanwhile, the altcoins were a sea of red with larger losses for BNB, Solana, Dogecoin, Sui, and Avalanche.

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