Will Crypto Markets Continue To Surge Amid $1.26 Billion Bitcoin Options Expiration

About 18,500 Bitcoin options contracts will expire on Friday, October 18, with a notional value of about $1.26 billion.

Today’s option expiry is very similar to last week’s, with reduced volatility resulting in a smaller expiry event. Therefore, the impact on the spot market is likely to be small.

However, there was a $4 billion Bitcoin options expiry event on the last Friday of the month.

Bitcoin Option Expiry

This week’s tranche of Bitcoin options contracts has a put/call ratio of 0.86. This means that there are slightly more long contracts (calls) expiring than short contracts (puts).

Additionally, open interest (OI), or the value or number of open option contracts that have not yet expired, remains high at the $70,000 strike price, with more than a billion dollars at that price, according to Deribit. OI was also valued at more than $1 billion at the $100,000 strike price, indicating that derivatives buyers are gaining confidence again.

Analyst James Check observes that there is a new high in Bitcoin futures OI. He added that this means two things, high leverage means a higher probability of shocks occurring, but the bigger Bitcoin gets, the bigger this metric gets just as a matter of scale.

New ATH in #Bitcoin futures open interest.

Two things:
1) High leverage means a higher probability of unstable shocks.
2) The bigger Bitcoin gets, the bigger this metric is just a matter of scale.

If you go long spot, be patient, & don’t FOMO
Setbacks will happen pic.twitter.com/7MoS6edDRV

— _Checkmate ⚡☢️️ (@_Checkmate_) October 17, 2024

In addition to the current Bitcoin options, there are 137,000 Ethereum options expiring soon with a put/call ratio of 0.62 and a notional value of $367 million. This brought Friday’s crypto options finish to more than $1.6 billion for the week.

Crypto Market Outlook

The total market capitalization has decreased slightly today to $2.42 trillion despite Bitcoin hitting a ten-week high.

The asset surged to $68,159 during Friday morning’s Asian trading session, building on momentum that has seen the asset rise nearly 12% since the same time last week.

BTC has not been at this price level since late July, leading analysts to speculate that a breakout is imminent after a higher high.

However, until BTC hit its all-time high in mid-March, it remained range-bound and could pull back over the weekend as profits were taken. Analysts believe that the accumulation period will end soon.

I think whatever BTC targets you have for this cycle should be adjusted higher now after 6 months of consolidation at the previous ATH. Much of the supply has changed hands, perhaps now owned by parties targeting more.

— Will (@WClementeIII) October 18, 2024

Altcoins dropped back today with FUD-hit Ethereum rejected again at $2,650 and retreating towards the $2,600 level at the time of writing.

Most altcoins are in the red apart from Dogecoin (DOGE) which gained 6% on the day to hit $0.132.