About 20,000 Bitcoin options contracts are set to expire on Friday, January 3, in the first event of 2025.
The contracts have a notional value of $1.93 billion, much smaller than the massive expiration event late last year, so the impact on the spot market is expected to be minimal.
The Bitcoin options contract pool this week recorded a put/call ratio of 0.68, indicating more long (call) contracts than short (put) contracts expiring.
Open interest, or the value of unexpired options contracts, was highest at the $120,000 strike price, with $1.4 billion in OI, according to Deribit. There was also $1.3 billion in OI at $110,000, indicating derivatives traders remain bullish with open contracts at higher strike prices.
On January 2, Deribit reported that the continuous trading market, or perpetual swap, is showing similar bullish signals as before the recent decline.
“The options market is reporting mixed messages: BTC’s short-term volatility is slightly more biased towards OTM puts, while longer-terms are showing a more bullish bias.”
It added that the year-end expiration of the majority of OI in the options market “did not produce the kind of surprises some had expected.”
In addition to Bitcoin options today, about 205,000 Ethereum contracts are also expiring. These contracts have a notional value of $710 million with a put/call ratio of 0.82.
This brings the combined notional expiration value of crypto options on Friday to around $2.6 billion.
Bitcoin has performed strongly in the last 24 hours, rising 1.7% to near $97,000 in early Asian trading on Friday. However, it remains range-bound and needs to break above the psychological $100,000 resistance to gain further momentum.
Meanwhile, Ethereum, which is expected to perform well this quarter, posted a 2% intraday gain near the $3,500 price level. ETH needs to break above $3,600 to break through the resistance and post further gains.
Altcoins were generally in the green on Friday, with most surpassing Bitcoin’s daily gains.
