Get ready: Roughly $3 billion in Bitcoin options contracts will expire later today. But what does that mean for the price of the biggest cryptocurrency?
At the time of writing, Bitcoin was up 0.2% in the past 24 hours—trading hands for $26,921, according to CoinGecko. The asset has brought the rest of the market with it, with most digital coins and tokens in the green.
But with Bitcoin options contracts set to expire, the price of cryptocurrency could dip or swing up even higher, right?
Not necessarily. According to experts who spoke to Decrypt, it’s unlikely the price of Bitcoin will budge that much.
Data from CME Group shows that $9 billion worth of open interest—or unexpired options contracts. And of those, $3 billion will expire today.
A Bitcoin options contract is a deal that lets buyers snap up Bitcoin at an agreed-upon price—regardless of whether the price changes by the time the contract expires, which can be many months later.
This means traders don’t have to buy the Bitcoin when the contract expires—they just can if they want to.
This means that if all that Bitcoin isn’t bought by Friday, it will be either held or dumped. This would lead one to believe that it could cause price volatility.
But that doesn’t usually happen. Anders Helseth, head of research at K33, told Decrypt that “in general, options expiries in crypto don’t affect prices much.”
While CryptoQuant contributing analyst BaroVirtual added that the current data “indicates no clear bullish or bearish sentiment.”
He added that it “was likely” Bitcoin would continue to trade between $26,500 and $27,250 in October.
“The tiny options volume by expiration also confirms the thesis that Bitcoin will probably not expect large-scale price spikes in the coming days,” he noted.
Although the price of Bitcoin has historically been volatile, that looks like it is changing. And it doesn’t look like $3 billion in options contracts will make much of a difference, either.
