Bitcoin likely to rally after September options expiry: Deribit poll

Traders expect bitcoin to rally after Friday’s monthly options expiry, a Twitter poll conducted on Thursday by Deribit, the world’s largest crypto options exchange, showed.

Nearly 50% of the 517 votes favored “UpOnly”, or the cryptocurrency extending its bounce from recent lows near $40,000. Meanwhile 21% voted for “Nuke” – indicating for a price drop. A total of 74,200 bitcoin options contracts worth $3.3 billion are due to expire today. Deribit alone is settling nearly 65,000 contracts at 08:30 UTC, the designated expiry time on the dominant exchange.

Most of the open interest is concentrated in the higher strike call options and will expire worthlessly.

This year, the options market has gained notoriety, with bitcoin witnessing pullbacks while heading into the expiry and regaining an uptrend following the event. The pattern was observed in the first four months of the year and in August.

Some analysts say the options market is still quite small to have a material impact on the spot price. As of Thursday, bitcoin’s global options volume was around $500 million, amounting to just 1.25% of the spot market volume of $40 billion, according to data sources Skew and CoinGecko.

Bitcoin is currently trading largely unchanged on the day near $44,900 amid signs of stability in traditional markets. The S&P 500 index closed above the crucial 50-day moving average on Thursday.