Bitcoin (BTC) has fallen below $105,000, briefly reaching as low as $104,802 during early trading in Asia. This drop comes just before a large amount of Bitcoin options—worth about $9.83 billion—are set to expire.
According to Deribit (a major crypto options exchange), around 92,500 Bitcoin options will expire today. Out of these, about 48,880 are "call options" (bets that the price will go up) and 43,620 are "put options" (bets that the price will go down). The ratio between puts and calls is 0.89, which suggests the market is slightly optimistic.
The "Max Pain Price" for today is $100,000. This is the price point where the most traders would lose money. Some market watchers believe sellers might try to push Bitcoin's price closer to that level to increase their own profits.
Right now, Bitcoin is trading near $106,105, which is 1.44% lower than it was 24 hours ago. The trading volume has gone up by over 15%, reaching about $58.37 billion. Last week, on May 22, Bitcoin hit a new record high of $111,970, so it's currently down about 5.22% from that peak.
Bitcoin has already been under selling pressure recently, and this big options expiry may be adding more downward momentum.
When this many options expire at once, it often causes more price swings in the market. Traders who are losing money might try to cut their losses, while others may try to take advantage of the price moves to earn more. Experienced traders often profit from these predictable shifts.
Besides Bitcoin, a large number of Ethereum (ETH) options are also expiring today—about 624,000 contracts worth $1.64 billion. Altogether, the value of Bitcoin and Ethereum options expiring today is nearly $11.5 billion, making this one of the biggest expiry events in recent months.