Bitcoin is heading into a $9.6 billion options expiry on Deribit this Friday, and most of that book is already out of the money. After the recent drop in spot price, roughly 78% of the contracts tied to the June 26 settlement now carry no intrinsic value, leaving traders focused on whether the unwind could trigger another wave of defensive selling.
Call positions are heavily stranded above spot
Among the contracts expiring, 91,149 call options are set to settle. Of that total, 97.83% are out of the money, representing about $5.44 billion in notional value, while only about $120.5 million in calls still retain intrinsic value at current prices. Total call notional stands at $5.56 billion. The imbalance built through June as Bitcoin sold off and left a large share of bullish positioning far above the market.
Puts are less one-sided. Data shows about $2.07 billion in out-of-the-money puts and around $2 billion in in-the-money puts, for total put notional of $4.07 billion across 66,726 contracts. Combined open interest for the expiry reaches 157,875 contracts. Across both calls and puts, about $7.51 billion of the book has no intrinsic value at current levels, equal to 78.01% of the total, while 21.99% remains in the money.
Max pain sits at $72,000 as settlement towers over later expiries
The put-to-call ratio stands at 0.73, which still points to a market leaning toward higher prices. Even so, the max pain level is $72,000, about 18% above spot. With Bitcoin trading well below that strike area, most of the upside bets are set to expire worthless.
This June 26 expiry is also much larger than the next major maturities on July 31, September 25, and December 25. That concentration matters. A large amount of closing and repositioning is being compressed into one session, and in past cycles this kind of high-notional settlement has coincided with sharper volatility when quarter-end liquidity is thin and positioning is skewed to one side.
Spot weakness, futures data and liquidations keep pressure on bulls
Late on June 24, Bitcoin fell to an intraday low of $59,012 on Binance as selling pressure intensified. The asset is down 30% on a year-to-date basis and still trades about 51% below the all-time high reached in October.
Signals from the perpetual futures market are mixed. CoinGlass shows a long-to-short ratio of 0.965, a reading below 1 that suggests selling volume still outweighs buying in trader positioning. At the same time, the open-interest-weighted funding rate has turned slightly positive at 0.0078%, indicating that larger pools of open interest shifted back toward the long side after moving from short dominance between June 24 and 25. Volume still favors sellers, but the bigger positions have tilted back toward longs.
Liquidation data remains unfavorable for bulls. Over the past 24 hours, about $320.74 million in long positions were liquidated, compared with roughly $97.28 million on the short side, a gap of more than three to one. Macro pressure is also building. Expectations for higher rates continue to pull capital away from assets with no yield, while hawkish Federal Reserve commentary and elevated Treasury yields point to tighter liquidity heading into Friday’s settlement.