How Will Markets React Today to Massive $13B Bitcoin Options Expiry Event?

Around 147,000 Bitcoin options contracts will expire on Friday, Nov. 28, and they have a notional value of roughly $13.4 billion.

This expiry event is larger than usual because it is the end of the month, so there may be some impact on spot markets, which have been mostly struggling to recover from this month’s meltdown.

US government economic data has started to flow again this week, with PPI inflation data coming in higher than expected, which is bearish for crypto markets.

Bitcoin Options Expiry

This week’s batch of Bitcoin options contracts has a put/call ratio of 0.58, meaning that there are significantly more long contracts expiring than shorts. Max pain is around $100,000, according to Coinglass.

Open interest (OI), or the value or number of Bitcoin options contracts yet to expire, is highest at $100,000, which has $2.2 billion at this strike price on Deribit. There is also almost $2 billion in OI at $80k and $85k targeted by short sellers.

Total BTC options OI across all exchanges is at $57 billion, according to Coinglass. Earlier this week, CryptoQuant reported that the market “just witnessed the largest drop in Open Interest of the current cycle.”

In addition to today’s batch of Bitcoin options, around 573,000 Ethereum contracts are also expiring, with a notional value of $1.7 billion, max pain at $3,400, and a put/call ratio of 0.50. Total ETH options OI across all exchanges is around $11.5 billion.

This brings Friday’s combined crypto options expiry notional value to around $15 billion. “Following the recent deleveraging across crypto markets, positioning has cooled into a more neutral stance around a key support and resistance zone,” observed Deribit.

Spot Market Outlook

Crypto markets haven’t moved much over the past 24 hours, with total capitalization remaining at $3.2 trillion. Bitcoin tapped $91,800 three times over the past day but was beaten back by resistance every time. It currently floats just below $91,000.

Ether has struggled to maintain any momentum over $3,000 and had fallen back below it at the time of writing on Friday morning in Asia.

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