Lately, there’s a hot talking point in the market: this coming Friday, about $18 billion worth of Bitcoin and Ethereum options will expire, and Bitcoin’s so-called “maximum pain” is around $75,000.
So, many people have started taking the $75,000 target as the next step for BTC.
But I think this logic needs to be treated with caution.
So-called “maximum pain” is essentially just a price calculated from the current distribution of open options contracts. In simple terms, it assumes that at expiration, option holders as a whole receive the lowest intrinsic value, which corresponds to that strike price.
It can reflect the options market’s position structure, but it can’t directly predict where Bitcoin will necessarily fall next.
Currently, the BTC price is still clearly above $75,000, and the options positions expiring in September are actually distributed around multiple key strike prices, including $70,000, $85,000, $90,000, $95,000, and $100,000.
More worth noting is that among this batch of options, call options have a higher proportion; currently, calls account for roughly 58%—60% of Bitcoin’s open interest.
But there’s also an easy-to-overlook issue here:
Seeing a lot of call options doesn’t necessarily mean the market is definitely bullish.
Because looking only at open interest, we can’t tell whether these options were bought or sold, and we also can’t determine whether they’re part of a spread trade, a hedged position, or some other structured strategy.
So instead of staring at the number $75,000, I’m actually more interested in what happens after Friday’s expiration.
After a large number of options expire, some positions may be closed or rolled over, and the hedging positions of related market makers may adjust accordingly.
This could have a fairly noticeable impact on short-term market liquidity and volatility.
So this Friday’s options expiry is definitely worth paying attention to.
But don’t understand it too simply:
“Maximum pain is $75,000, so BTC must drop to $75,000.”
Maximum pain reflects the options market’s position structure, not a price prediction model for Bitcoin.
What truly matters is the direction of capital flows before and after expiration, trading volume, changes in open interest, and whether large positions show any clear closing or rollovers.
$75,000 can be observed, but there’s no need to treat it as a “target level” BTC must reach.
