Bitcoin's $16 billion quarterly options settlement arrives with a 'call-heavy' book

Think of it as paying a $100 premium to reserve the right to buy a $1,000 laptop anytime in the next four weeks. If the laptop’s price jumps to $1,200, you exercise your right and effectively save $200 (minus your $100 token). If the price stays at or below $1,000, you let the reservation lapse and lose only the $100.

Traders use call options to profit from an impending surge in the underlying asset, in this case, BTC or ETH. Put options do the opposite by protecting the buyer from a potential sell-off in the underlying asset.

The crypto options market has expanded multifold since 2020, with traders combining call and put options alongside spot and futures positions to express views on price direction, volatility, and time decay. That surge has turned quarterly options settlements into must-watch events for crypto traders.

One thing traders widely track is max pain for expiries: the spot price level at which option buyers stand to lose the most on the day of expiry. The theory, though widely debated and challenged, is that options sellers seek to drive the spot price to the maximum pain point to inflict maximum pain on buyers.

The maximum pain for bitcoin is $75,000, well below the spot price of $85,500. Deribit described the level where option buyers collectively suffer the greatest losses as a “soft magnet for price into expiry.”