Bitcoin options contracts valued at approximately $6.4 billion settled on the derivatives exchange Deribit at 08:00 UTC on Friday, August 28. The expiry involved about 81,700 contracts and represented nearly one-fifth of the exchange’s total Bitcoin options open interest at the time.

The settlement followed a sharp price advance that carried Bitcoin from roughly $62,000 to levels near $80,000 within a week. By the time of expiry, the cryptocurrency was trading in the high $70,000s to around $80,000 after briefly exceeding $81,000 before a modest pullback.

Contract Breakdown and Positioning

The expiring contracts consisted of 44,639 calls and 37,061 puts, producing a put-to-call ratio of 0.83. This tilt indicated a predominance of bullish positioning built before the recent advance.

Open interest concentrated heavily at the $75,000 and $80,000 strikes. The $75,000 call strike held the largest notional value at about $236 million, while the $80,000 strike carried roughly $157 million. More than $500 million in notional value sat within 5 percent of the prevailing spot price, placing a significant portion of the book near the money.

Most of the contracts were expected to expire out of the money or with limited settlement value given the price trajectory. Dealers who sold the options typically adjust hedges by buying or selling the underlying asset as prices move, which can add short-term volatility around large expiries.

Max Pain Level Far Below Spot

Deribit data placed the max-pain level—the price at which the greatest number of contracts would expire worthless—near $68,000 to $70,000. That level stood roughly $9,000 to $11,000 below the spot price at the time of settlement.

In many smaller expiries, max pain can exert a gravitational pull as dealers manage gamma exposure. With Bitcoin trading well above that zone and substantial open interest clustered near current prices, any such effect appeared limited. A substantial decline would have been required to push the market toward the lower strikes before settlement.

Market Context and Concurrent Events

The expiry occurred against a backdrop of overlapping catalysts. It coincided with the second day of the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium, where newly appointed Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh was scheduled to deliver a keynote address. Traders also monitored recent inflation data and ongoing ETF flow dynamics.

Frank Hepworth, CEO of New Market Trading, noted that large expiry events often produce less disruption than anticipated. He pointed out that 62 percent of the Friday contracts were set to lapse without triggering settlement and highlighted the 200-day moving average near $69,000 as a technical level of interest. Hepworth also observed that the following month’s scheduled expiry could approach nearly twice the size of the current event.

Historical precedents supported a cautious view on immediate impact. A $15 billion expiry in June 2025, with max pain near $102,000, generated limited price movement. A $13.3 billion event the previous December similarly produced subdued reaction despite max pain sitting close to $100,000.

Post-Expiry Positioning

Settlement clears the expiring contracts from the open-interest ledger. Market participants now turn to the new distribution of positions to gauge where traders are placing bets after the advance toward $80,000 rather than the levels that prevailed before the rally.

Dealer hedging activity around the concentrated near-the-money strikes had the potential to either pin prices near key levels or accelerate moves through them in the hours surrounding settlement. With the bulk of the large book now removed, attention shifts to rebuilding open interest and the interaction between residual options positioning and broader macroeconomic developments in the coming sessions.

Bitcoin continued to trade near the $80,000 area in the immediate aftermath of the expiry, leaving participants to assess whether the cleared contracts would reduce short-term volatility or simply reset the stage for the next wave of positioning.