Bitcoin Holds Above $107K Ahead of Friday’s Big Options Expiry With $102K Max Pain Price
Bitcoin (BTC) experienced muted trading activity during Thursday’s U.S. trading hours, as anticipation builds for a significant options expiry event on Friday. Currently priced at $107,500, BTC shows a minor 0.2% dip over the past 24 hours. The CoinDesk 20 index, tracking the top 20 cryptocurrencies (excluding stablecoins and exchange tokens), mirrored this subdued trend, falling by 0.9% during the same period.
This Friday’s options expiry on Deribit is exceptionally large, according to Jean-David Péquignot, chief commercial officer at Deribit. With a staggering $40 billion in open interest, a substantial 38% of these contracts are set to expire. Péquignot highlights a “max pain price” of $102,000, indicating the price level that would result in the maximum losses for option holders. The put/call ratio of 0.73 suggests a relatively balanced sentiment, though slightly favoring put options (bets on price declines).
Bitcoin’s implied volatility, as measured by Deribit DVOL, has significantly decreased from 50% in April to 38%. This decline, according to Péquignot, reflects growing market confidence in Bitcoin’s role as a macro-hedge asset. However, put-call skews currently indicate no clear short-term directional bias among traders.
Péquignot emphasizes the critical importance of the $105,000 support level for Bitcoin. Technical analysis suggests potential caution if this level breaks. He further notes that low open interest in perpetual contracts, combined with subdued implied volatility and skew, points to limited expectations for substantial price swings leading up to Friday’s expiry.
The cryptocurrency market also saw positive movement in several related stocks. Core Scientific (CORZ) experienced a remarkable surge of over 33%, fueled by a Wall Street Journal report suggesting a potential acquisition by AI hyperscaler CoreWeave (CRWV). Other notable gains include Circle (CRCL), Coinbase (COIN), Riot Platforms (RIOT), and Hut 8 (HUT), showing increases between 5% and 7%. Conversely, MicroStrategy (MSTR) experienced a nearly 1% decline.
