On Friday (September 25) at 08:00 UTC, a batch of Bitcoin options with a notional value of about $14.39 billion to $14.73 billion will settle quarterly; including the Ethereum portion, the total is about $16.6 billion, accounting for roughly 40% of the open interest in $BTC options. This is the largest single-day settlement of the year.
The structure is bullish overall: the put/call ratio is about 0.52, meaning call contracts are nearly twice as many as puts. Call positions are concentrated at strike prices of $85,000, $90,000, $100,000, and even $125,000.
What has actually been widely circulated, however, is the "max pain" level. Its algorithm is: group all open contracts by strike price and find the price at which the "largest number of contracts expire worthless." Most institutions place this around $72,000 this time, while the current price is $86,000, about $14,000 higher. So the idea that "settlement will pull the price toward $72,000" has become popular again.
I do not agree. Max pain only has a magnet-like effect when settlement is near and market makers' hedging exposure is highly concentrated around the current price. When the current price is $14,000 above it, the main action of the hedging flow is taking profits, not pulling the price back. More importantly, this magnet was already disproven once in June: the widely touted $72,000 level was never reached then.
So this time, what I care more about is not the price battle before settlement, but what happens after it: at which strike price will open interest rebuild? If the center of rebuilding clearly shifts higher, it means the market is pricing in a higher range; if positions pile up again around the current price, it means everyone is just waiting for direction.
The biggest risk is not the settlement itself, but treating a statistical result as a trading signal.
Before settlement, will you reduce positions over the weekend, or hold and wait for volatility to be released?
#140亿美元比特币期权周五到期
The structure is bullish overall: the put/call ratio is about 0.52, meaning call contracts are nearly twice as many as puts. Call positions are concentrated at strike prices of $85,000, $90,000, $100,000, and even $125,000.
What has actually been widely circulated, however, is the "max pain" level. Its algorithm is: group all open contracts by strike price and find the price at which the "largest number of contracts expire worthless." Most institutions place this around $72,000 this time, while the current price is $86,000, about $14,000 higher. So the idea that "settlement will pull the price toward $72,000" has become popular again.
I do not agree. Max pain only has a magnet-like effect when settlement is near and market makers' hedging exposure is highly concentrated around the current price. When the current price is $14,000 above it, the main action of the hedging flow is taking profits, not pulling the price back. More importantly, this magnet was already disproven once in June: the widely touted $72,000 level was never reached then.
So this time, what I care more about is not the price battle before settlement, but what happens after it: at which strike price will open interest rebuild? If the center of rebuilding clearly shifts higher, it means the market is pricing in a higher range; if positions pile up again around the current price, it means everyone is just waiting for direction.
The biggest risk is not the settlement itself, but treating a statistical result as a trading signal.
Before settlement, will you reduce positions over the weekend, or hold and wait for volatility to be released?
#140亿美元比特币期权周五到期