The options market for Bitcoin is set to see a significant event on Friday, July 26, with around 61,200 contracts expiring, amounting to a notional value of $4.26 billion. This expiry is larger than usual due to it being the end of the month. The put/call ratio for these contracts stands at 0.61, indicating that there are almost twice as many long contracts expiring compared to shorts. Open interest at higher strike prices, particularly at $70,000 and $100,000, seems to favor the bulls. With $942 million at $70,000 and a whopping $1.3 billion at $100,000 strike price, according to Deribit. On the put side, there is around $500 million in OI at the $60,000 strike price.
In addition to the Bitcoin contracts, there are also around 500,000 Ethereum options contracts expiring on July 26, with a notional value of $1.76 billion. The put/call ratio for ETH contract expiries is 0.46, indicating more than twice as many long contracts expiring compared to shorts. The largest amount of open interest is at the $4,000 strike price with over $520 million, according to Deribit. Overall, the two batches of crypto options combined have a notional value of around $6 billion, making it one of the largest expiry events this year.
The market has seen a decline in spot markets this week, despite the launch of spot Ethereum ETFs in the United States for the first time. Bitcoin retraced to $64,000 on July 25 after failing to break through resistance at $68,000. However, it managed to reclaim $67,000 during the Friday morning Asian trading session. On the other hand, Ethereum has fared much worse, with an 11% drop since the spot ETFs launched, dipping to $3,100 on July 25 before recovering to $3,250 during Asian trading on Friday.
The impact of the Bitcoin and Ethereum options expiry on the market remains to be seen. With a significant amount of contracts expiring, there is a possibility of increased volatility in the coming days. Traders and investors will be closely monitoring the price movements of both Bitcoin and Ethereum to gauge the market sentiment and potential trends. It will be interesting to see how the market reacts post-expiry and whether there will be any significant price movements as a result of these events.