Markets
Cryptocurrency markets are reeling ahead of Friday’s giant options expiration
Options on Bitcoin and Ether with a notional value greater than $10 billion will expire on June 28.
Markets fell slightly on Wednesday in choppy trading as traders awaited US economic data ahead of the expiration of key options on Friday.
Bitcoin fell 1% to $61,000 in the last 24 hours, while Ether it is trading down almost 2%. In the meantime, Solana fell 2% after yesterday’s 8% rally.
Bitcoin price
Most of the top 100 digital assets by market cap are in the red or stable today, with the exception of Fetch.ai (FET), Notcoin (NOT), and SingularityNET (AGIX), which are up 5% or more. Tokens recently launched by ZkSync (ZK) AND LevelZero (ZRO) continue to bleed.
The sideways price action shows up as Bitcoin options with a notional value of $6.6 billion, which represents more than 40% of total open interest, according to the options platform Deribit – will expire on June 28th.
Almost half of the balance Ether Options worth nearly $3.5 billion will expire at the same time.
According to Deribit, the so-called “max pain” levels (the price at which the greatest number of options holders will suffer losses) for BTC and ETH are $57,000 and $3,400, respectively. Bitcoin is trading about 6.5% above its threshold with two days to go, while Ether is up about 8%.
Stock markets are stable ahead of US jobless claims and consumer spending reports expected on Thursday and Friday. Investors will be looking for signs of cooling inflation and a weakening job market, which could justify the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates later this year.