The cryptocurrency market is entering a critical turning point with a massive option expiration of approximately $3 billion set to occur today. This financial activity, which focuses specifically on Bitcoin and Ethereum, is preparing to change the balances at a time when the bearish effect in the market deepens and investor appetite decreases. Especially in this period when 38,000 Bitcoin contracts will expire, spot prices remaining below the “maximum pain” point increases the tension in the market.
Bear Claw and Liquidity Balance in the Options Market
The $2.5 billion worth of Bitcoin options expiring today embodies the negative atmosphere in the market with numbers. Although the put/call ratio of 0.76 for Bitcoin shows the abundance of call contracts on paper, the fact that the spot price remains far from the “maximum pain” level of $ 75,000 indicates that many investors will be left empty-handed. Especially according to Deribit data, billion-dollar open positions accumulated at the levels of 50,000 and 60,000 dollars prove that market players are trying to secure themselves against sharper declines.
The spread of strategies defined by analysts as “bear put spread” documents that investors are expecting a controlled decline rather than panic levels. The fact that the total open interest rate of the market has reached a huge figure of 36.6 billion dollars creates an institutional consensus that not only today but also the next one or two months will be quite painful. Especially the fact that pricing below $60,000 has begun to be accepted at the institutional level further deepens the loss of confidence in retail investors.
On the Ethereum side, 217,000 contracts worth approximately $406 million are expiring. The put/call ratio of 0.89 for Ether paints a much more pessimistic picture compared to Bitcoin. Although the maximum pain point was determined as $ 2,150, the price remained below the $ 2,000 threshold, indicating that the market-wide selling pressure had a more devastating effect on altcoins.
Blood Loss and Realized Price Expectation in the Spot Market
The total market value of the cryptocurrency ecosystem has decreased by $125 billion since the beginning of the week, falling to $2.34 trillion. Bitcoin’s effort to hold on to the $66,000 limit in the Asian session is considered as a preliminary preparation for a retreat towards the $55,000 realized price region, indicated by technical analysis. The tendency of institutional and individual investors to withdraw from the market causes transaction volumes to cool and liquidity to shrink, increasing volatility.
Ether’s intraday lows, falling to $1,900, prove how the weakness in the largest cryptocurrency has spread to the entire ecosystem. Analysts warn that if Bitcoin fails to maintain current support levels, a harsher wave of liquidations could be triggered in the altcoin market. The expiry transactions that will take place today will be the answer to the question of whether the market will be pulled towards $ 75,000 with a magnetic effect or whether it will open a new door that will accelerate the downward trend.
This defensive attitude adopted by market makers and large-scale investors shows that short-term speculative movements have been replaced by strategic hedging moves. The fact that put options, which constitute 37% of the options, mostly remain in the “out-of-the-money” region, once again reminds us of the great uncertainty the market is in finding its direction.
