Crypto Showdown: Bitcoin & Ethereum Plunge Below ’Max Pain’ as $4B Options Expiry Looms

Crypto markets brace for impact as BTC and ETH tumble below key psychological levels.

Wall Street's billion-dollar poker game reaches its climax—and retail traders aren't invited to the table.

Here's why today's $4B options expiry could trigger fireworks across digital asset markets.

When the suits play derivatives chicken, someone's getting wrecked. Spoiler: It's probably not the hedge funds.

Also, the put-call ratio was 1.13 in the last 24 hours, indicating traders are buying more puts than calls. This signals a rise in bearish sentiment.

Bitcoin price fell nearly 0.5% in the past 24 hours, with the price changing hands at $104,806 at the time of writing. The 24-hour low and high were $103,602 and $105,329, respectively.

Over 2182K ETH options with a notional value of $0.6 billion will expire. The put-call ratio was 0.69 and the max pain point was $2,600. Over the last 24 hours, the call volume was higher than puts despite a rising put-call ratio of 0.74 at the time of writing.

According to Deribit, BTC is showing more balanced positioning NEAR max pain price and ETH flows have tilted slightly bullish as calls dominate puts volume in the last 24 hours.

ETH price tumbled over 0.5%, with the price trading at $2,524 at the time of writing. It indicates selling pressure rising on Ethereum as the price slipped below the max pain price. Furthermore, ETH technical indicators signal a recovery in the coming days.

Moreover, total BTC and ETH futures open interest have also witnessed low volumes in the last 24 hours. As per CoinGlass data, BTC futures OI was at $69.83 billion and ETH futures OI was at $35.03 billion.