On Aug. 28, Bitcoin options worth $6.44 billion in notional value will expire on Deribit. That puts the market through what the report called its first real liquidity test since BTC bounced and climbed back toward $80,000.
The timing is awkward. The expiry hits on the second day of the Jackson Hole meeting for global central bankers. The report says new Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh is due to give his first marquee speech since taking office. And Bitcoin’s latest rebound is now running into its first resistance area above $80,000.
Size of the expiry and contract mix
Deribit figures quoted in the report show 81,700 Bitcoin options contracts expiring in this batch. That is close to 20% of the platform’s Bitcoin open interest. The split: 44,639 call options and 37,061 put options. So the put-to-call ratio sits at 0.83, which points to a market that still leans bullish.
The report was careful on one point: the $6.44 billion number is notional value, meaning the face value of the underlying assets linked to those contracts, not the cash that will actually be exchanged at settlement. Most of the contracts expiring today are out of the money and, as the report put it, will expire worthless.
$75,000, $80,000, and the max pain level
Open interest is packed most heavily around the $75,000 and $80,000 strike prices. But the report says traders should read those as zones where options sellers have stacked positions, not as guaranteed targets for Bitcoin.
What traders seem to care about more is max pain. That is the strike where the largest share of options expires worthless and buyers take the biggest hit. Deribit data in the report puts that level near $70,000, roughly $9,000 to $11,000 below Bitcoin’s current price.
The report says that when the gap between spot and max pain gets wider, market makers tend to hedge more aggressively. And because many call holders are sitting on paper gains right now, any move back toward max pain would suggest a hard drop in Bitcoin, not just boring sideways action.
Frank Hepworth says expiry often sounds worse than it is
Not everybody is preparing for a major jolt. Frank Hepworth, chief executive of trading firm New Market Trading, said options expiry “always sounds scarier than it actually is” (“always sounds scarier than it actually is”).
He said 62% of the contracts are expected to expire out of the money and lose all value. He also said the September expiry should be nearly twice the size of today’s. And if the correction sparked by a hotter-than-expected Personal Consumption Expenditures price index stretches into settlement day, he said investors should watch support near the 200-day moving average at about $69,000.
Past expiries and this week’s other catalysts
Past cases suggest options expiry does not always shove Bitcoin around directly. The report pointed to a $15 billion options expiry in June 2025. At that time, max pain was at $102,000 and implied volatility dropped to its lowest point since October 2023, while Bitcoin barely moved.
Still, the report argues the main issue this time is not just the gap between spot and max pain. Bitcoin is also moving toward the big strike levels at $75,000 and $80,000. That could force more active hedging from market makers.
There are other moving parts this week too. The report mentions inflows into spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs, along with Warsh’s speech. So yes, traders are watching this expiry closely.
Hepworth also said September options contracts have already grown to nearly twice the size of the current settlement. That suggests the crypto market may face a harsher pressure test in three weeks.