Market Is Indifferent After The Largest BTC Options Expiry In History

The cryptocurrency market is indifferent as data today shows, after what was hyped as “the largest options expiry in history” for Bitcoin (BTC) this Friday morning. However, little has changed in the BTC spot market, where the prices today have hovered mostly in the range of $9,100 to $9,200.

If we zoom in on the shorter timeframes, details show that a brief sell-off occurred just ahead of the expiration of the Bitcoin options contracts. This was followed by a recovery, all largely within the said $100 trading range.

In this manner, the crypto news today show that the trading day turned out to largely follow the “dump and pump” pattern that some of Twitter expected, judging from one new poll created by Su Zhu, the CEO of the crypto investment firm Three Arrows Capital. Below we are sharing it with the results.

Congrats dump and pump

— Su Zhu (@zhusu) June 26, 2020

The latest Bitcoin options contracts expired this morning at 08:00 UTC on Deribit which amounted to 74,000 in BTC or approximately $675 million in notional value as the exchange announced on Twitter.

As the crypto market is indifferent, Deribit is by far the largest Bitcoin options exchange by open interest, followed by CME which is more institutionally focused. The massive Bitcoin options expiration day comes on the heels of the news of Bitcoin and its sharp selling on Wednesday and early Thursday this week.

BTC
🔥74k BTC out of 138k total OI in BTC options has just expired or 53% with a notional value of approximately USD 675 million

ETH
🔥 309k out of 717k total OI in ETH options has just expired or 43% with a notional value of approximately USD 71 million

— Deribit (@DeribitExchange) June 26, 2020

It was that selling pressure that brought the spot price of Bitcoin down from a level of around $9,650 on Wednesday morning to a low of $9,000 early on Thursday. Now, the cryptocurrency market is indifferent and the price of BTC went on to recover slightly before selling off as today’s options expiry approached.

Data from Skew markets also shows that the current put-to-call ratio of Bitcoin options is sitting right below 1. In other words, there is a roughly equal amount of capital that is being allocated to bullish call options as to the bearish put options, which contributes to stability in the spot markets.

At press time, Bitcoin is trading at $9,182 with a new minimal increase and a market cap of $169.1 billion. The dominance that BTC has over the market is measured at 64.3% right now. If the momentum follows, we could easily see a swing above $9,200 for BTC now, but the Bitcoin news today show that market is indifferent to the options expiry.