Bitcoin Volatility Concerns Arise As $675M In BTC Options Expire

We can now see that $675 million worth of Bitcoin options expire today, and the latest updates show that the Bitcoin volatility concerns are growing. Experts are now debating the potential impact of this on the Bitcoin price in the crypto news today.

On June 26, we could see that $675 million worth of BTC options expired while industry experts remain divided on its potential effect on price volatility. Some people believe that the record expiration date will cause Bitcoin (BTC) to see a large price movement.

At less than 24 hours until the highly anticipated expiration, the price of Bitcoin dropped by 7% on a single day on June 24. Additionally, some traders speculate that this drop was partially triggered by the uncertainty in the United States stock market.

Now, a rising number of coronavirus (COVID-19) infections and concerns around the high unemployment rate led to an overall increase in caution towards risk-on assets, such as Bitcoin and single stocks.

BTC
🔥74k BTC out of 138k total OI in BTC options has just expired or 53% with a notional value of approximately USD 675 million

ETH
🔥 309k out of 717k total OI in ETH options has just expired or 43% with a notional value of approximately USD 71 million

— Deribit (@DeribitExchange) June 26, 2020

As the Bitcoin news today show that BTC is approaching the record expiration date this Friday, the sentiment is still remaining cautious. The Bitcoin volatility concerns are making traders change their minds about investing and trading high on BTC today.

According to information from Deribit, around $675 million worth of BTC options officially expired on June 26, and data from ByteTree shows that the cryptocurrency is trading at a premium, with miners selling 1,379 more BTC than they mined in the past week or so.

All of this shows that traders do not necessarily anticipate the options expiration as a main trigger of the Bitcoin volatility concerns. However, there is a confluence of rising selling pressure from miners, as well as growing geopolitical risks and the options expiry which are all factors that can increase the likelihood of a spike in volatility.

Data from Skew shows that most of the Bitcoin options contracts are expiring on Deribit. Since 2020, the exchange has seen a significant increase in both daily volume and open interest – the latter referring to the total amount of all active options contracts in the market. By daily volume, Deribit has around 75% of the Bitcoin options market share, followed by CME at a distant second and with a 17% market share.