Bitcoin BTC traded in a tight range just during U.S. hours Thursday ahead of a big options quarter expiry on Friday.
The top cryptocurrency is currently trading for $107,500, down 0.2% in the past 24 hours, while the CoinDesk 20 — an index of the top 20 coins by market capitalization, except for stablecoins, exchange coins and stablecoins — lost 0.9% in the same period of time.
“This Friday marks one of the largest option expiries of the year on Deribit,” Jean-David Péquignot, chief commercial officer at Deribit, told CoinDesk. BTC options open interest stands at $40 billion, Péquignot said, and 38% of these contracts will expire on Friday.
“Max pain price for Friday is at $102,000, with a put/call ratio of 0.73,” said Péquignot.
Bitcoin’s implied volatility, measured by Deribit DVOL, dropped to 38% from 50% in what was a wild April, signaling perhaps that the market is increasingly confident in the cryptocurrency’s macro-hedge role, according to Péquignot. Meanwhile, put-call skews show no clear directional positioning for traders in the short-term.
“Bitcoin’s $105,000 level is pivotal, with technicals suggesting caution if support fails,” Péquignot said. “Low open interest in perps and fairly depressed Bitcoin implied volatility and skew are indicative of limited expectations for sharp price movements going into Friday’s expiry.”
A number of crypto stocks are managing gains on Thursday, with Core Scientific (CORZ) surging more than 33% off of a Wall Street Journal report that the bitcoin miner may soon be acquired by AI Hyperscaler CoreWeave (CRWV).
Circle (CRCL), Coinbase (COIN), Riot Platforms (RIOT) and Hut 8 (HUT) were higher by 5%-7%, while Strategy (MSTR) was lower by nearly 1%.
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