Bitcoin Bulls Eye US$90,000 as Deribit Options Expiry Nears

Traders are watching as US$15 billion in Bitcoin options contracts expires on Friday, which could impact the cryptocurrency's price. The Deribit exchange has a significant portion of its open interest tied to this expiry, with more than a third of all Bitcoin options set to expire on September 25.

The put-to-call ratio is at 0.70, indicating that there are more bets on higher prices, but the largest concentrations of call options are clustered at strike prices of US$85,000, US$90,000, and US$100,000. At its current price of around US$84,000, Bitcoin is trading above the max pain level of US$76,000.

Caroline Mauron from Orbit Markets notes that hedging activity may be dampening rallies until expiry, and momentum could resume once these options expire or are rolled towards the next quarterly expiry. Some traders are already looking beyond Friday, shifting positions into later expiries with bets stretching as high as US$150,000 for March 2027.

Oliver Carding from Tesseract Group cautions that it's not publicly known who holds the short side of the contracts and treats the expiry as a positioning and roll event rather than something that sets direction.