Friday is Bitcoin options day, and a large stack is ready to expire. Will they have any impact on its lackluster price? A number of Ethereum options will also expire today, and ETH has been even quieter than BTC lately.
On September 8, around 25,000 Bitcoin options contracts will expire with a notional value of $640 million. Additionally, this is a much smaller expiry event than in previous weeks, which have seen up to three times the open interest.
Bitcoin Options Expiry Day
The max pain point of today’s batch of expiring Bitcoin options contracts is $26,500, pretty close to current spot prices.
Max pain is the price level with the most open contracts and at which most losses will be made when they expire.
The put/call ratio for today’s expiring contracts is 0.51. This means they are selling twice as many long contracts as shorts.
Greeks Live noted that BTC and ETH intraday volatility has been very low for most of the week. There was “a small wave pulling up to the max pain point near the time of delivery, which was the opposite of last week,” it added.
The lack of volatility “resulted in a more stable position structure this week,” it added. There is currently low daily option implied volatility and a relatively stable long-term option IV.
“Put options are more expensive and the low liquidity market needs to guard against declines, but the probability of a crash is not high from the whale’s positions.”
IV is a measure of expected future volatility derived from the expiring derivatives contracts.
In addition to the BTC contract expiry, 138,000 Ethereum contracts will expire today. These have a notional value of $220 million and a max pain point of $1,650.
The put/call ratio for ETH options is 0.86, signaling more balance between longs and shorts.
BTC Price Outlook
Bitcoin prices have had a little lift this Friday, gaining 1.7% on the day to reach $26,217 at the time of writing.
It is the highest price BTC has seen since late August, but the asset remains range-bound.
The $26,000 region has become a solid layer of support, but Bitcoin has failed to sustain larger gains, facing heavy resistance above it.
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