$3.8B Crypto Options Expiry Looms—Here’s What’s at Stake for Bitcoin and Ethereum

Markets brace for impact as $3.8 billion in Bitcoin and Ethereum options expire—volatility ahead?

Why this matters: Traders are scrambling to hedge positions before the Friday expiry, with max pain levels suggesting a potential tug-of-war between bulls and bears. Bitcoin’s $2.4B slice of the pie dwarfs Ethereum’s $1.4B, but both could see exaggerated moves.

The fine print: Open interest clusters around $70K for BTC and $3.8K for ETH—key levels to watch. Market makers will likely defend these strikes unless macro conditions intervene (looking at you, Fed).

Bonus cynicism: Wall Street still can’t decide if crypto is ‘digital gold’ or a ‘risk asset’—meanwhile, degenerate traders just want leverage.

State of BTC and ETH Options

With the expiry of the 6 June contracts, the data provided important insights into institutional positions and fast-paced actions in both Bitcoin and Ethereum markets. For Bitcoin, 31,000 Options ended, with a ratio of 0.76. Their max pain level were set at $105,000 with a total notional value of $3.18 billion.

The Open interest for BTC options reached $41.69 billion. According to Coinglass, the market saw $33.33 billion in OI on Deribit, which was the highest. CME’s OI was valued at $3.12 billion.

The $3.09 billion in OI on OKX pointed to strong activity from retail traders. Also, Binance managed over $1.33 billion, while Bybit controlled $823.20 million. The heavy involvement of traders before expiry indicated Optimism among participants.

Source: X

Besides that, just over 241,000 ETH Options also expired with a Put/Call ratio of 0.67. This showed a max pain point at $2,575, amounting to $624 million. This revealed that traders were slightly backing ETH and the overall market in a bullish way.

The main delivery data was about 10% of total positions, a percentage that saw a rebound this week after several weeks of declines. Activity from institutional traders was also evidenced in the FORM of more block orders.

And yet, analysts didn’t seem too optimistic. Especially as the general view is that both Bitcoin and Ethereum would increase little by little and not all at once. Still, the market moved mostly sideways over most of the week.

Source: X

Elon Musk and Donald Trump getting into a public fight caused the spillover of Tesla’s stock drop to U.S and cryptocurrency markets. The way that inflation and interest rates changed put pressure on crypto sentiment.

Ratio of crypto options vs. crypto futures

The BTC OI Ratio changed to 58.14% and for ETH it was at 21.19%, displaying moderate to low pressure. The high ratio for BTC may lead to some changes in price. However, the lower ratio for ETH likely meant not much hedging effect.

For the past year, bitcoin has mainly had a rating between 50%–125%. This pointed to a stable amount of influence from Options trading. Differently, ETH’s OI ratio had stayed far below 0.5 for the majority of the year. This suggested that many market trades occurred in futures and perps.

Source: Coinglass

In the short term, BTC could lead to fast price changes, whereas ETH could keep its value steady. It is key to keep an eye on BTC’s volatility as transfers take place after an expiry. Especially since they mainly affect areas where Open Interest rates are highest.