Bitcoin Options Worth $9.4B Expire Friday, Max Pain at $51K

On March 29, over $9.4 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC) options are set to expire on the Deribit cryptocurrency exchange. Analysts are speculating that Bitcoin’s “max pain” price could be around $50,000. According to data shared by Unfolded in a tweet on March 27, approximately 134,000 BTC worth of open interest will expire on the Deribit exchange at 8 am UTC on Friday, indicating a max pain price of $50,000.

The max pain price refers to the strike price with the most open Bitcoin options contracts, at which the asset would cause financial losses for the majority of option holders upon expiration. If inflows in spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) slow down, Bitcoin could potentially experience a correction to the $51,000 level, as suggested by Ki Young Ju, the founder and CEO of CryptoQuant, in a recent post. He mentioned that new whales, primarily ETF buyers, have a $56,000 on-chain cost basis. In bull markets, corrections typically involve a maximum drawdown of around 30% with a max pain price of $51,000.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs saw negative outflows for five consecutive days last week but experienced over $15 million in net flows on March 25, the same day Bitcoin’s price reached its highest daily close above $69,000 in the past ten days. On March 26, the ten Bitcoin ETFs observed a combined net inflow of $418 million.

Analyst Rekt Capital noted in a tweet on March 25 that Bitcoin’s pre-halving price correction followed historical patterns seen before previous halvings. The pre-halving retrace occurred And Bitcoin is now reaching $70,000. Rekt Capital suggested that if the old all-time high of $69,000 is flipped into support, Bitcoin’s price could break out towards new all-time highs.

Bitfinex analysts believe that last week’s correction indicates that Bitcoin has formed a local bottom or is close to doing so. According to their research note shared with , the pullback from Bitcoin’s all-time high of $73,666, which resulted in an approximate 17.5% correction, suggests that a local bottom is being established, if not already done.

A significant amount of Bitcoin options are set to expire on the Deribit exchange, leading analysts to speculate that Bitcoin’s max pain price could be around $50,000. Factors such as ETF inflows and historical patterns suggest potential price corrections and the formation of a local bottom for Bitcoin.