Around 20,500 Bitcoin options contracts will expire on Friday, May 22, with a notional value of roughly $1.5 billion. This event is smaller than usual, so it is unlikely to have any impact on spot markets.<\/p>\n
Crypto markets have been in decline all week, with around $50 billion leaving the space as Bitcoin continues to weaken. Positive news appears to have zero impact as investors remain under macroeconomic rain clouds.<\/p>\n
This week\u2019s batch of Bitcoin options contracts has a put\/call ratio of 0.69, meaning that there are more sellers of longs than shorts. Max pain is around $79,000, according to Coinglass, which is a little higher than current spot prices, so some could be out of the money on expiry.<\/p>\n
Open interest (OI), or the value or number of Bitcoin options contracts yet to expire, remains highest at the $80,000 strike price on Deribit, with $1.65 billion, but short sellers still have $1.2 billion in OI at $60,000. Total BTC options OI across all exchanges has been steadily climbing this month and is at $37.6 billion, according to Coinglass.<\/p>\n
Options Expiry Alert.
\nAt 08:00 UTC tomorrow, over $1.8B in crypto options are set to expire on Deribit.<\/p>\n
bitcoin:native : $1.53B notional | Put\/Call: 0.69 | Max Pain: $79,000
\nethereum:native : $264M notional | Put\/Call: 1.03 | Max Pain: $2,200<\/p>\n
BTC traders continue targeting\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/fv5dDrPx6M<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Deribit (@DeribitOfficial) May 21, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n\n Traders have been using the recent rebound to establish defensive positions for the final ten days of the month, said<\/a> crypto derivatives provider Greeks Live this week.<\/p>\n \u201cOverall, the market is positioning itself to defend against price pullbacks but does not anticipate a market collapse.\u201d<\/p>\n It added that May and June have long been viewed as unfavorable trading months, and in May, major investors have been \u201csteadily increasing their defensive positions: buying effective protection, selling margin calls at the tail end, and controlling costs.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to today\u2019s batch of Bitcoin options, around 123,000 Ethereum contracts are also expiring, with a notional value of $263 million, max pain at $2,200, and a put\/call ratio of 1. Total ETH options OI across all exchanges is around $6.9 billion.<\/p>\n \u201cETH positioning has shifted from strongly call-biased last week to nearly balanced, suggesting conviction has cooled as traders await fresh catalysts,\u201d said Deribit.<\/p>\n Crypto markets have retreated again today, with total capitalization dropping to $2.67 trillion.\u00a0Bitcoin failed to break above $78,000 and fell back to an intraday low of $76,750 before a minor recovery on Friday morning. It appears to have resumed its downtrend, which is dragging the rest of the market down with it.<\/p>\n Ether and the rest of the altcoins have been mostly flat<\/a> over the past 24 hours, with very little activity after a largely bearish week.<\/p>\n The post Crypto Traders Brace for $1.5B Bitcoin Options Expiry Today<\/a> appeared first on CryptoPotato<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Around 20,500 Bitcoin options contracts will expire on Friday, May 22, with a notional value of roughly $1.5 billion. This event is smaller than usual, so it is unlikely to have any impact on spot markets. Crypto markets have been in decline all week, with around $50 billion leaving the space as Bitcoin continues to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-169111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169111"}],"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=169111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=169111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=169111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=169111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Spot Market Outlook<\/h2>\n