Bitcoin futures options worth over $1.5 billion are set to expire on April 12, leading to potential price volatility that could cause Bitcoin to drop to $69,000. This information comes from a post by a pseudonymous trader known as Greeks. The put-to-call ratio of these options is 0.62, indicating a “max pain” point of $69,000 for Bitcoin.
However, Hao Yang, the global head of derivatives trading at Bybit exchange, believes that Bitcoin may not necessarily fall back to its previous all-time high. He stated that periods close to the expiration of options often experience increased price volatility in the crypto markets. However, Yang also noted that he does not expect significant volatility in this case due to the relatively small size of the options set to expire on Friday.
As of 10:25 am UTC, Bitcoin was trading at $70,725, showing a 5.9% increase on the weekly chart. While Bitcoin could still face increased downside price volatility due to external macroeconomic factors, Andrey Stoychev, the head of Prime Brokerage at Nexo, believes it is not solely because of the upcoming options expiry.
Stoychev pointed out that the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) for March slightly exceeded expectations at 3.5% year-on-year. This resulted in Bitcoin whales buying the dip and pushing the price back above $70,000 on April 10.
In the United States, the inflows from spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have slowed down ahead of the Bitcoin halving. Data from Dune Analytics shows that these ETFs generated $220 million worth of net inflows in the past week. This is a decrease from their best week on March 11, when they generated $2.58 billion worth of net inflows. Last week, the ETFs only managed $337 million worth of net inflows, down over 45% from the previous week’s $615 million.
Despite the slowdown in inflows, Bitcoin ETFs still hold over 839,000 BTC worth $59.4 billion in total on-chain holdings, which represents 4.26% of the current BTC supply.
In conclusion, the upcoming expiration of Bitcoin futures options could lead to price volatility, potentially causing Bitcoin to drop to $69,000. However, experts have varying opinions on how significant this volatility will be. Additionally, inflows from Bitcoin ETFs in the United States have slowed down, but they still hold a significant amount of BTC.