The Bitcoin market is facing a critical liquidity test. Approximately $10 billion in nominal Bitcoin options are set to expire on the Deribit exchange at 4:00 PM Beijing time on June 28, accounting for nearly 40% of the platform’s total open interest.
As prices have continued to decline recently, the structure of expiring option positions has deviated significantly from traders’ initial bullish expectations. Deribit Chief Commercial Officer Jean-David Pequignot noted that the position layout was originally designed for a medium-term bullish outlook, but the drop in spot prices has rendered the consensus long positions clearly ineffective. Data shows that the current put/call ratio stands at 0.83, with bullish bets still holding a majority, but a large number of call options have strike prices far above the current market price of approximately $61,000, leaving them out-of-the-money and lacking intrinsic value. Meanwhile, put options are concentrated in the $60,000 to $75,000 range, implying that bearish bets have a relatively higher probability of turning a profit.
Bitcoin briefly fell below the $60,000 mark during the New York trading session on Wednesday, hitting a six-month low of $59,023, and was trading at $61,673 in Thursday’s noon session. Since reaching an all-time high in March of this year, the cryptocurrency has retraced more than 50%, and it is currently trading below its 200-week moving average, a technical level generally interpreted by the market as a signal of a long-term bear market. Regarding the upcoming expiration event, Adam Haeems, Head of Asset Management at Tesseract Group, stated that the expiration mechanism itself is merely a position cleanup and does not determine market direction. However, given that this coincides with the end of the quarter and a period of thin summer liquidity, concentrated expiration pressure could lead to an overshoot in Friday’s trading session, followed by a mean reversion after market makers unwind their hedges. He emphasized that a more challenging window may arrive in the first full trading week of July, when quarterly contracts are fully settled and leverage levels have declined further.
Beyond the derivatives market, the macro environment is also exerting pressure. Market-compiled data shows that U.S.-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs have recorded nearly $3 billion in net outflows since the start of June. Strategy Inc. (MSTR), the world’s largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, is also under pressure, with market concerns over its debt repayment capacity rising. Expectations of higher interest rates have made yield-free assets like Bitcoin less attractive, prompting sustained capital outflows from the crypto market.
