How Will Cryptocurrency Perform When $1.2 Billion in Bitcoin Options Expires?

Today is crypto options expiration day, as markets rebound after the Fed's interest rate cut this week. Can the bullish momentum continue?

How Will Cryptocurrency Perform When $1.2 Billion in Bitcoin Options Expires?

There are about 20,000 Bitcoin options contracts expiring on Friday, September 20. These cryptocurrency derivatives have a notional value of about $1.26 billion.


Today's options expiration is very similar in size to last week's expiration event, which did not have a major impact on the cryptocurrency spot markets.


Next week, more than $5.3 billion worth of Bitcoin contracts are set to expire, which is a month-end and quarter-end event.


Bitcoin Options Expiry

This week, the put/call ratio for Bitcoin options contracts was 0.85, meaning slightly more long (call) contracts are expiring than short (put) contracts, but they are fairly close.


Open interest, or the value or number of open options contracts that have not yet expired, is still high at the $70,000 and $75,000 strike prices, with the amount exceeding $700 million at both levels.


What’s more, there’s an additional $848 million in OI at the $90,000 strike price and over $1 billion in OI at the $100,000 strike price, according to Deribit data.


Cryptocurrency markets ended the week up $120 billion, or about 5.7%, for a total market capitalization that stood at $2.27 trillion at the time of writing.


Bitcoin hit its highest price in nearly a month on Thursday, briefly topping $64,000 before retreating during the Asian trading session on Friday morning. Ethereum hit an intraday high of $2,550 before falling back to $2,530, up 5.5% on the day.


In addition to this week’s Bitcoin options, there are about 124,000 Ethereum options expiring with a notional value of $303 million and a put/call ratio of 0.66.


The Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index is back to a neutral reading of 54, and market sentiment has improved slightly over the past week.

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