More than $1B in Bitcoin options expire this Friday

Friday is here again and that means Bitcoin options are about to expire. Moreover, the crypto markets are finishing a strong week with big gains among altcoins, but will Bitcoin's expired derivatives be encouraged?

About 25,000 Bitcoin options contracts expire on December 22. But this set is slightly smaller than last week's ending event. It's very little compared to the end of the year expected next Friday.

Bitcoin options expire

Bitcoin options contracts expiring today are $1.11 billion. Additionally, the put/call ratio is 0.70, meaning more longs (calls) have expired than shorts (puts).

There is a lot of interest at the $40,000 and $45,000 strike prices, and about 22,400 calls are pending at $50,000, Derbitt said.

On December 21, Greek Live, the options market is showing mixed signals, with BTC hovering around $44,000.

“Both BTC and ETH block transactions by purchase and more than half of the block transactions handled $13 million and $88 million respectively, for a total of $100 million.”

“The giant whales are moving into their bearish position when the market sentiment is high, and traders should be careful of the risk of damage,” he added.

Deribit also reports that the total open interest notional value is $16.4 billion. Open interest (OI) is the number of contracts that have not yet been completed or are due to expire.

Read more: 9 Best AI Crypto Trading Bots to Maximize Your Profits

In addition to today's Bitcoin options expiring, about 217,000 Ethereum options contracts will expire today. Their notional value is around $491 million, and their call ratio is 0.60.

The most interesting strike prices for ETH derivatives traders are $2,400 and $2,500.

Crypto market overview

Today's expiring options are unlikely to affect the spot market. They gained 2.5% on the day, pushing total capitalization to $1.74 trillion, the highest since early May 2022.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin has gained 1.4%, returning to resistance at $44,135. Moreover, the property increased by 3.6% from the same period last week.

Ethereum is up about 3% to trade at $2,259 at the time of writing.

However, it is the altcoins markets that have made huge gains today for Solana, Cardano, Avalanche, Polkadot and Chainlink. Solana temporarily overtook BNB to take fourth place on the market table but fell back to fifth.