Will $9.5B Bitcoin Options Expiration Push Markets Higher?

Approximately 98,500 Bitcoin options contracts will expire on Friday, November 29 in a large end-of-month expiration event.

They have a notional value of $9.48 billion, which is more than triple last week’s maturity. However, it is still likely to be eclipsed at the end of the year-end event in December.

Expiration of Bitcoin Options

This week’s stretch of Bitcoin options contracts has a put/call ratio of 0.84, meaning slightly more long contracts (calls) than short contracts (puts) are expiring.

According to Deribit, open interest, or the value or number of options contracts that have not yet expired, is highest at the $100,000 strike price, with $2 billion in OI.

Crypto derivatives provider Greeks Live reported that the Bitcoin options market has seen massive block trades, with more than $120 million in cumulative block buy option trades as of November 26.

“Giant whales are on the move and there is likely to be a big market just around the corner,” he added.

Source: Deribit

“BTC saw volatility drop to 50, while ETH remains firmer at 70. Implied volatility is flat for BTC, but rising for ETH,” Deribit noted in its weekly newsletter.

In addition to current Bitcoin options, around 412,000 Ethereum contracts expire today. These have a notional value of $1.47 billion and a put/call ratio of 0.74, bringing the notional expiration value of Friday’s combined crypto options to about $11 billion.

Crypto market outlook

Total market capitalization has been flat over the past 24 hours at $3.5 trillion, near its all-time high. Since the beginning of November, around $1 trillion has flowed into the crypto asset space.

Bitcoin fell as low as $94,700 on the day before rebounding sharply during the Asian trading session on Friday morning, adding $2,000 and falling to $96,700. The asset appears to be consolidating at this level, where it has been for the past week or so.

We are 11% back $BTC and people literally say the end is imminent.

It was literally less than 10 days ago that the same people were asking for a withdrawal to buy.

Now they say, “I’ll wait lower.”

ok

— Greeks.live (@GreeksLive) November 28, 2024

Ethereum has largely held on to the gains and was trading below $3,600 at the time of writing.

XRP performed well, rising 7% to $1.57, while Cardano (ADA) was up 5% to $1.05 at the time of writing. Altcoins in general posted gains on Friday as markets remained active despite the small pullback.

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