Approximately $11 billion in Bitcoin options are scheduled to expire on Friday, October 30, on the Deribit exchange. The contracts represent about one-third of the total Bitcoin options open interest on the platform and cover roughly 135,000 Bitcoin, consisting of about 88,700 call contracts and 46,500 put contracts.

Bitcoin traded near $80,800 to $81,500 in the hours leading into the expiry after slipping below the $80,000 level. Deribit’s Bitcoin index stood at $80,788.80 at one pre-expiry snapshot on Thursday. Settlement is set for 08:00 UTC.

Skew Shifts Toward Puts After Break Below $80,000

Short-dated options pricing moved decisively in favor of puts following the drop below $80,000. Jean-David Pequignot, chief commercial officer at Deribit, said the break pushed Bitcoin’s front-end 25-delta skew heavily toward puts at more than 10 volatility points over calls. Implied volatility for comparable puts exceeded that of calls by that margin.

Open interest figures alone do not reveal whether traders are net long or short the contracts. Calls still outnumber puts, producing a put-to-call ratio near 0.52. The largest call concentrations sit at the $90,000, $95,000 and $100,000 strikes, levels that would leave those contracts out of the money if prices remain near current levels. The biggest put cluster is around $70,000.

Gamma Concentrated in Critical Range

Market participants are focusing on hedging dynamics around the current trading range rather than the distant strikes. Approximately 70% of the gamma risk in the expiring options is concentrated between $75,000 and $82,000, according to Adam Haeems, president of Tesseract Group Asset Management.

If market makers are net short these options, their hedging activity during price declines could amplify downward moves, particularly in the $75,000 to $78,000 zone. Below $80,000, the number of put options exceeds call options by more than double. Max pain, the level at which the largest number of contracts expire worthless for buyers, is calculated near $78,000.

The expiry is larger than the $6.4 billion event in August and roughly three times the size of a comparable 2021 expiry, though smaller than the $15 billion settlement in March.

Broader Market Backdrop

The options event arrives one day after the Federal Reserve held its policy rate in a 3.75% to 4.00% range. Two officials dissented in favor of a rate increase. The 10-year Treasury yield closed near 5.05%. U.S. midterm elections on November 3 add another layer of potential volatility. Some options dealers may slow the issuance of new contracts until election results become clearer, according to Caroline Mauron, co-founder of Orbit Markets.

A Bloomberg Markets Pulse survey of year-end Bitcoin price forecasts showed a median of $90,800 if Republicans retain majorities in both chambers of Congress, $76,450 if Democrats gain control of both, and $84,100 under split control.

U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded net inflows of about $137 million on October 28, extending a three-day streak. BlackRock’s IBIT accounted for nearly all of the total. Spot Ethereum ETFs, by contrast, saw net outflows of roughly $21 million for a third consecutive session. On-chain data showed a 22% weekly decline in the 30-day moving average of long-term holder distribution volume.

Bitwise Asset Management raised its 2036 Bitcoin price target to $1.6 million from $1.3 million in a long-term capital market assumptions report, citing higher projected sizes for the global store-of-value and institutional investment markets. The firm’s base-case scenario assumes Bitcoin captures 25% of the store-of-value market and 1% of institutional assets by that year.

The next large Deribit Bitcoin options expiry is already scheduled for December 25, covering a similar notional size of about 135,500 Bitcoin.