Around 31,000 Bitcoin options contracts will expire on Friday, Dec. 19, and they have a notional value of roughly $2.7 billion.\u00a0This expiry event is smaller than average, so it will not impact spot markets, which have been sliding lower all week.<\/p>\n
Various factors have contributed to the continued sell-off, including another Chinese Bitcoin mining crackdown<\/a>, delayed crypto market regulations in the United States, and fear over the Bank of Japan hiking rates.<\/p>\n This week\u2019s batch of Bitcoin options contracts has a put\/call ratio of 0.8, meaning that there are slightly more calls expiring than puts (shorts). Max pain is around $88,000, according to Coinglass.<\/p>\n Open interest (OI), or the value or number of Bitcoin options contracts yet to expire, is highest at $100,000, which has $2.3 billion at this strike price on Deribit. There remains around $2.1 billion in OI at $85,000, which was hit this week.\u00a0Total BTC options OI across all exchanges is at $52.5 billion, according<\/a> to Coinglass.<\/p>\n \u201cBTC open interest is concentrated around $88K, with slightly heavier put positioning, pointing to a relatively contained expiry unless spot breaks range,\u201d noted Deribit.<\/p>\n Options Expiry Alert <\/p>\n At 08:00 UTC tomorrow, around $3.18B in crypto options are set to expire on Deribit.$BTC<\/a>: $2.72B notional | Put Call: 0.81 | Max Pain: $88K<\/p>\n BTC open interest is concentrated around 88K, with slightly heavier put positioning, pointing to a relatively\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/wW8ZYXYCsx<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Deribit (@DeribitOfficial) December 18, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n\n In addition to today\u2019s batch of Bitcoin options, around 155,000 Ethereum contracts are also expiring, with a notional value of $460 million, max pain at $3,100, and a put\/call ratio of 1.1. Total ETH options OI across all exchanges is around $11 billion and has been falling since late August.<\/p>\n \u201cETH positioning is more distributed across strikes, with notable upside interest above $3.4K, keeping larger moves in play if volatility reaccelerates,\u201d said Deribit.<\/p>\n This brings Friday\u2019s combined crypto options expiry notional value to around $3.2 billion.<\/p>\n Markets have fallen again, and total capitalization has dropped below $3 trillion to its lowest level since April.<\/p>\n Bitcoin saw yet another seemingly manipulated\u00a0pump-and-dump after the CPI\u00a0print<\/a>, as it fell<\/span>\u00a0to $84,500 before reclaiming $85,000 during the Friday morning Asian trading session. The asset looks structurally weak here, and further losses are expected.<\/p>\n Ether prices also continued to weaken, falling below $2,800 briefly but holding on at this level for now.\u00a0The altcoins were in more pain with heavier losses for XRP, Solana, and Cardano, all losing more than 4% on the day.<\/p>\n The post How Will Markets React When $2.7B Bitcoin Options Expire Today?<\/a> appeared first on CryptoPotato<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Around 31,000 Bitcoin options contracts will expire on Friday, Dec. 19, and they have a notional value of roughly $2.7 billion.\u00a0This expiry event is smaller than average, so it will not impact spot markets, which have been sliding lower all week. Various factors have contributed to the continued sell-off, including another Chinese Bitcoin mining crackdown, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":121659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121658"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=121658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/121659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=121658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=121658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=121658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Bitcoin Options Expiry<\/h2>\n
Spot Market Outlook<\/h2>\n