Friday is back again. This refers to the Bitcoin options expiration date. Cryptocurrency markets recovered from leverage earlier this week, but could today’s expiration event push leverage higher?
Approximately 37,000 Bitcoin options contracts are scheduled to expire on Friday, December 15th. Moreover, that batch is slightly more than last week’s expiration event, but less than the large options expirations coming up at the end of the month.
Bitcoin Options Expiration
The notional value of today’s BTC contract tranche is $1.58 billion. Additionally, the put/call ratio is 1.02, meaning that put (short) sellers and call (long) sellers are evenly matched.
The biggest problem with the options is that they are currently priced at $42,000, slightly below the spot price.
Greeks Live said the market decline has “led to a lot of protected options being traded, with put positions outgrowing calls this week.”
It also noted low implied volatility, a measure of future volatility derived from expiring derivative contracts.
“Options data shows that major trading is still concentrated in BTC options, IV has been very stagnant for almost a month now, and large options moves are still underway.”
This means that the market is not expecting much movement in either direction in the near term.
According to Deribit, there are 23,000 call options at a strike price of $50,000, suggesting derivatives speculators remain bullish.
Read more: 9 Best AI Cryptocurrency Trading Bots to Maximize Your Profits
Ethereum derivatives and market outlook
In addition to a large batch of expiring Bitcoin options, there are also 268,000 Ethereum contracts. The notional value is $610 million and the put/call ratio is 0.66. This means there are almost twice as many put options calls expiring.
The biggest problem for ETH options is $2,250, which is very close to the current spot value.
The total cryptocurrency market capitalization remained at $1.68 trillion on this day. Less than two weeks later, scope restrictions were reached and integration could continue.
Bitcoin fell 0.8% and was trading at $42,630 at the time of writing. Despite the correction recovery, it failed to close again, this time at $44,000.
As of this writing, the price of Ethereum was unchanged on the day at $2,266. However, the asset has been on a downward trend over the past six hours.
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