On Friday, April 18, around 23,200 Bitcoin options contracts are set to expire with a notional value of around $1.9 billion. While this number is slightly smaller than the previous week, it still represents a significant amount of volume in the derivatives market.
Derivatives and spot trading activity in the crypto market has been declining, with volume and price volatility declining. Therefore, the impact of these contracts’ expirations on the spot market is expected to be minimal.
For this week’s contract, the put/call ratio is 0.92, indicating a balance between traders betting the price will fall (put) and rise (call). The “max pain” point or price level where the biggest loss will occur at expiration is $82,000. Meanwhile, the highest open interest was recorded at $100,000, reaching around $1.4 billion, indicating increasingly bullish sentiment among investors.
According to analytics platform Greeks Live, the options market is currently dominated by positive expectations, with some investors expecting BTC prices to rise to levels between $88,000 and $90,000 within the next week. However, there is still high shorting activity in the futures market, while the spot market is showing continued buying, a combination that creates the potential for a short squeeze.
