More than one-third of Bitcoin options open interest on Deribit is tied to the Sept. 25 expiry. The put-to-call ratio is around 0.70, while large concentrations of call options are positioned at strike prices of $85,000, $90,000 and $100,000, Reuters reported.
Bitcoin was trading around $84,000 on Thursday, leaving it well above the roughly $76,000 max-pain level cited for the expiry. Max pain refers to the price at which the largest number of options would expire worthless, although it is not considered a reliable indicator of where Bitcoin will trade after settlement.
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The concentration of call options at higher strike prices has put dealer hedging in focus. Caroline Mauron, co-founder of digital-asset derivatives liquidity provider Orbit Markets, said hedging activity could dampen gains before the contracts expire, with momentum potentially changing after the positions are settled or rolled into later expiries.
Mauricio Di Bartolomeo, co-founder of crypto lender Ledn, said a similar dynamic could emerge around the $85,000 and $100,000 call concentrations if Bitcoin continues to rise.
The latest expiry follows a record options settlement involving BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust last week. Those contracts were heavily weighted toward calls, and the rise in Bitcoin prices pushed some positions into profit, prompting dealers that had sold the options to adjust their hedges, according to Di Bartolomeo.
Traders are also positioning beyond Friday’s settlement. Jake Ostrovskis, head of over-the-counter trading at Wintermute, said some market participants are moving exposure into October and December contracts, including calls with strike prices of $95,000 and $100,000. Some longer-dated positions extend to $150,000 for March 2027.
Oliver Carding, head of marketing at Tesseract Group, cautioned that the size of the expiry alone does not determine Bitcoin’s direction, describing the event instead as a positioning and roll event.
The options expiry comes after a strong recovery in Bitcoin that began in August. Bloomberg reported that Bitcoin had gained more than 30% since the start of that rebound, with a US Treasury buyback announcement helping lift risk assets more broadly.
With billions of dollars in contracts expiring Friday, traders are watching how Bitcoin behaves around the heavily positioned strike levels and whether derivatives-related hedging pressure changes once the contracts roll off. The expiry itself does not establish a guaranteed direction for Bitcoin, but it could alter short-term market positioning and liquidity.
