More than a third of all Bitcoin options open interest, or total contracts, on Deribit that is set to expire on Friday is tied to the Sept 25 expiry. The put-to-call ratio — a closely followed measure of options to sell versus ones to buy — stands at 0.70, indicating there are more bets on higher prices. The largest concentrations of call options are clustered at strike prices of US$85,000, US$90,000 and US$100,000. 

At around US$84,000, Bitcoin is trading well above the so-called max pain level of US$76,000 — the price at which the largest number of options would expire worthless. That leaves traders watching whether hedging around the large call positions restrains the market before Friday’s settlement.

Options-market positioning often puts a temporary lid on rallies. Dealers are broadly neutral around current prices, but are positioned in a way that can prompt them to sell as Bitcoin rises towards US$90,000 to US$95,000 in order to keep their hedges balanced, potentially dampening gains until the options expire.

“Hedging activity may therefore be dampening rallies until expiry, and momentum could resume once these options expire or are rolled towards the next quarterly expiry,” said Caroline Mauron, co-founder of Orbit Markets, a digital-asset derivatives liquidity provider.

The options-market turning point comes after a powerful recovery in Bitcoin that began in August, when the US Treasury buyback announcement helped drive most risk assets higher. Bitcoin has gained over 30% since. 

The setup follows a record options expiry last week for BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT). Those contracts were heavily tilted towards calls, and Bitcoin’s rally pushed many of them into profit, forcing dealers that had sold the options to buy IBIT shares to hedge their exposure, according to Mauricio Di Bartolomeo, co-founder of crypto lender Ledn.

That buying can filter through to the underlying cryptocurrency as new ETF shares are created, he said. The Deribit expiry on Friday could produce a similar effect if Bitcoin keeps climbing towards areas with heavy call exposure.

“The crypto-native expiration inherits that setup,” Di Bartolomeo said. “If the move continues, the large call blocks at US$85,000 and US$100,000 are where the same dynamic kicks in on the Deribit book.”

Some traders are already looking beyond Friday. Jake Ostrovskis, head of over-the-counter trading at Wintermute, said positions are being shifted into later expiries, with many traders choosing Bitcoin calls at US$95,000 to US$100,000 for October and December. Some longer-dated bets stretch as high as US$150,000 for March 2027.

Still, the size of an expiry alone doesn’t dictate where Bitcoin goes next. Oliver Carding, head of marketing at Tesseract Group, said that it isn’t publicly known who holds the short side of the contracts.

“I would treat the expiry as a positioning and roll event rather than something that sets direction,” he said.

Uploaded by Liza Shireen Koshy