Bitcoin Stumbles Below $105K as $9.83B Options Expiry Looms—Traders Brace for Volatility

Bitcoin’s price takes a pre-expiry dip, testing key support levels as $9.83 billion in options contracts approach settlement. Market makers scramble to hedge exposure while degenerate gamblers—sorry, ’traders’—place leveraged bets on post-expiry momentum.

The crypto market’s perpetual casino rolls on: Will this expiry trigger a violent gamma squeeze or just another round of ’buy the rumor, sell the news’? Either way, Wall Street’s quant overlords are already 3 steps ahead, arbitraging retail traders’ predictable panic.

The Max Pain Price, the price mark at which option traders will face the most loss, is pegged at the $100,000 mark. Currently, Bitcoin is trading above its max pain level, but the gap has sparked speculation of downward pressure as sellers might push BTC price down towards the Max Pain Price to maximize profits. 

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading near $106,105—down 1.44% in the past 24 hours. Its 24 hour trading volume currently sits at $58.37 billion, an increase of 15.45% today. After breaking to an all-time high of $111,970 last week on May 22, the Bitcoin price is currently down 5.22% from that level. 

While bitcoin was facing a notable selling pressure in the past few days, this mammoth options expiry has given another push to its downward trajectory. 

In times like this, when such a massive amount of options expire, the crypto market usually turns much more volatile as loss-making traders attempt to minimize their loss while profitable traders push market prices to unlock higher profits. These are also times when seasoned traders capitalize on predictable price movements and extract huge profits out of it. 

Besides 92,500 Bitcoin options, nearly 624,000 ethereum (ETH) options worth $1.64 billion are also set to expire today on 30 May, at a Put/Call Ratio of 0.81. This marks by far one of the largest crypto options expiring in the past few months, with Bitcoin and Ethereum options’ notional value totaling nearly $11.5 billion.

Also read: Hyper Liquid Trader Loses $99M as Bitcoin Falls Below $105K