Another Friday has rolled around, and another batch of crypto options contracts is expiring as spot markets marched to new all-time highs this week.
Around 40,000 Bitcoin options contracts will expire on Friday, August 15, and they have a notional value of roughly $4.8 billion.
This expiry event is slightly larger than last week’s, but it is still unlikely to be enough to influence spot markets, which have notched all-time highs in terms of market capitalization this week.
This week’s tranche of Bitcoin options contracts has a put/call ratio of 0.90, meaning that there are almost as many long contracts expiring as shorts, and the bulls and bears are evenly matched.
Open interest (OI), or the value or number of BTC options contracts yet to expire, is highest at $140,000, which has surged to almost $3.2 billion at this strike price on Deribit. There is also around $2.4 billion OI at $120,000 strike price as the bull speculators load up on contracts and dwindling OI for lower strike prices.
Additionally, total Bitcoin futures OI currently stands at $83.3 billion, which is near record highs, according to CoinGlass.
Greeks Live, a crypto derivatives provider, said this week that the group was predominantly bullish, “with strong momentum in both BTC and ETH, with traders actively selling puts and holding long positions that are deeply in profit.”
“Key sentiment revolves around continued put selling strategies and excitement about ETH’s exceptional performance, though some concern exists about high volatility levels.”
Greeks added that trading volume shows the market’s enthusiasm for trading as Deribit traded $10.9 billion in options on Thursday, breaking the $10 billion mark for the first time in a single day.
In addition to today’s batch of Bitcoin options, there are around 287,000 Ethereum contracts that are also expiring, with a notional value of $1.3 billion, and a put/call ratio of 1.0. This brings Friday’s combined crypto options expiry notional value to around $6.1 billion.
Total market capitalization hit an all-time high of $4.25 trillion this week, but it is still smaller than America’s largest corporation, Nvidia, and just 18% of gold’s total market cap of nearly $23 trillion.
However, markets had started to cool off by Friday, with total cap dropping 4% to $4.1 trillion at the time of writing.
Bitcoin led the losses, falling 3.8% to below $118,000, but managed to regain a little composure during the Friday morning Asian session as it nudged back toward $119,000.
Ethereum also cooled from recent four-year highs, sliding below $4,500 on Thursday before recovering to trade at $4,630 on Friday morning. Altcoins were also dumping hard despite increased calls for altseason … it’s not here yet!
A recognized pattern of Asia buying and the United States selling has started to form this week.
