It is a Friday, end-of-the-year Bitcoin options expiry event, and one of the largest in history, which is likely to induce some volatility.
Around 263,000 Bitcoin options contracts will expire on Friday, Dec. 26, and they have a notional value of roughly $23 billion.
This expiry event is huge, being the end of the quarter and end of the year, so there may be some impact on spot markets, which have been sideways for most of the week.
Trading has been subdued over the Christmas period, as investors look ahead to 2026 with renewed hope that the four-year cycle has been broken.
Bitcoin Options Expiry
This week’s batch of Bitcoin options contracts has a put/call ratio of 0.37, meaning that there are a lot more calls (longs) expiring than puts (shorts). Max pain is around $96,000, according to Coinglass, which means that most of the contracts will be worthless on expiry.
Open interest (OI), or the value or number of Bitcoin options contracts yet to expire, is highest at $100,000, which has $2.2 billion at this strike price on Deribit. There remains around $2.2 billion in OI at $85,000. Total BTC options OI across all exchanges is at $52 billion, according to Coinglass.
“Post-expiry flows will matter more than price. Watch positioning. How would the market react to an expiry this big?” asked Deribit.
🎄 Year-End Options Expiry 🎄
This Friday, a massive $28.5B in BTC and ETH options expire on Deribit, the largest expiry on record -representing over half of total open interest –$BTC: $23.4B+ notional | Put Call: 0.36 | Max Pain: $96K
$1.2B in put OI clustered at $85K, with… pic.twitter.com/c1l3r7Ac6U— Deribit (@DeribitOfficial) December 23, 2025
“When a large volume of options expires, many institutions roll over positions early to mitigate pin-prick risk. At this point, picking up the leftover positions discarded by institutions offers exceptional value — prices are extremely favorable,” explained crypto derivatives provider Greeks Live.
In addition to today’s big batch of Bitcoin options, around 1.25 million Ethereum contracts are also expiring, with a notional value of $3.4 billion, max pain at $3,100, and a put/call ratio of 0.45. Total ETH options OI across all exchanges is around $11 billion and has been falling since late August.
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Ether options positioning “reflects caution, not capitulation,” said Deribit. This brings Friday’s combined crypto options expiry notional value to around $27 billion.
Spot Market Outlook
Spot markets have remained relatively flat, with total cap hovering just above $3 trillion.
Bitcoin had a little jump to $89,000 but could not make any momentum above this level and retreated to $88,850 at the time of writing. The asset remains range-bound and flat on the week.
Ether prices have remained weak, below $3,000 over the past 24 hours, and most altcoins are in the red as usual.
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