On Friday, July 26, approximately 61,200 Bitcoin options contracts worth about $4.26 billion will expire.
This expiry event is larger than usual because it marks the end of the month.
Despite the launch of spot Ethereum ETFs in the United States for the first time, spot markets have experienced a loss of momentum this week.
Bitcoin Options Expiry
The current substantial amount of Bitcoin derivatives set to expire has a put/call ratio of 0.61, indicating that almost twice as many long contracts as shorts will expire.
There is significant open interest at higher strike prices favoring the bulls, with $942 million at $70,000 and a considerable $1.3 billion at a $100,000 strike price as reported by Deribit.
On the put side, there is about $500 million in open interest at the $60,000 strike price.
In addition to Bitcoin contracts, roughly 500,000 Ethereum options contracts are set to expire on July 26, with a total value of $1.76 billion.
The put/call ratio for the ETH contract expiries is 0.46, indicating more than twice as many long contracts expiring than shorts. The majority of open interest is at the $4,000 strike price with over $520 million according to Deribit.
Combining the two sets of crypto options would result in a notional value of around $6 billion, making this one of the largest expiry events this year.
Furthermore, Ethereum ETFs experienced a second day of outflows on July 25, with $152 million leaving the products overall. This outflow was driven by a significant Grayscale exodus of $346 million despite BlackRock and Fidelity receiving more than $100 million in inflows combined.
Crypto Market Impact
This week, spot markets have seen a decline of around $120 billion, with Bitcoin retracing to $64,000 on July 25.
Despite a recovery from a low of $54,000 in early July, Bitcoin struggled to surpass resistance at $68,000 earlier this week and subsequently dropped. However, it climbed back to $67,000 during the Asian trading session on Friday morning.
On the other hand, Ethereum performed poorly despite the launch of spot ETFs. ETH dropped by 11% since the launch day, falling to $3,100 on July 25 before bouncing back to $3,250 during Asian trading on Friday.
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