Today many options on Bitcoin and Ethereum are expiring

Today, June 27, 2025, is the last Friday of the month, and as often happens on the last Friday of the month, many options expire, including Bitcoin and Ethereum

In total, options on BTC and ETH expiring today amount to approximately 17 billion dollars, which is a very significant figure

The options on Bitcoin and Ethereum

Options, in financial markets, are derivative products that give the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell at a predetermined price before their expiration date

Therefore, all those who have purchased options expiring today must either use them during the day or they will no longer be able to use them

Obviously, in the market, there are also options that expire later, next week, or on the last Friday of the coming months, but those expiring today are really many

There are two types of options, the put options, which give the right to sell at a predetermined price, and the call options, which give the right to buy at a predetermined price. Both have an expiration date after which this right can no longer be exercised, and obviously both have a cost

They are generally used as coverage, or insurance, because if, for example, you purchase Bitcoin or Ethereum at a certain price, having the right to resell them perhaps at the same price by a certain date allows you to reduce losses in case of a decline

The most important crypto market for options on Bitcoin and Ethereum is Deribit

Yesterday on the official X profile of the exchange news was given that today more than 17 billion dollars of options on Bitcoin and Ethereum would expire

Obviously, in addition to Deribit, there are other exchanges that allow the trading of options, therefore the overall value of the crypto options expiring today is even higher

The data published by Deribit stated today that options on Bitcoin worth 15 billion dollars were expiring, with a put/call ratio of 0.74 and worst-case price scenario at 102,000$

Instead, on Ethereum, 2.3 billion dollars of options were expiring, with a put/call ratio of 0.52 and worst-case price scenario at 2,200.

In particular, the put/call ratio calculates precisely the ratio between the number of put options and that of call options expiring

When this ratio is less than 1, it means that there are more call options (buy) than put options (sell), whereas if there were more put options than call, it would be greater than 1. In both cases, for both BTC and ETH, it is less than 1, which means that overall the picture looks positive

Despite this, a high value of expiring options often means that there could be an increase in volatility.

Furthermore, it is the last options expiration before the end of the quarter, but also of the semester

The consequences on prices

In reality, it is not known what consequences all this could have on prices, precisely because options give a right but not an obligation

In other terms, even if there are more call options than put options, the former could theoretically also be used only minimally, while the latter could be used much more

Therefore, even if one might expect that overall there will be more of those call used than those put, in reality the opposite could also happen, at least on a theoretical level

So if both are used in the same percentage, more purchases than sales will be made, whereas it is likely that the percentage will be different

Note that this is the largest single crypto options expiration of 2025 so far, and this means that volatility could indeed be sustained

Moreover, last week there were almost 34,000 crypto options expiring today on Deribit for Bitcoin, while today they have risen to almost 140,000

The sentiment, however, still seems to be positive

The S&P500

Another dynamic is also being added to all this

In fact, after the correction in March and April, and after the rebound in May, the S&P500 index is again at its highs

In fact, since at this moment the futures on the S&P500 are clearly positive, it is absolutely possible that today this index will record a new all-time high.

The S&P500 index is the main index of the USA stock exchanges. All this reveals that the traditional American financial markets are attracting capital these days, particularly starting from Monday.

Therefore, this week has been characterized by a flight of speculators towards the US stock markets, which, however, will be closed tomorrow for the weekend

This means that, on one hand, there might be volatility in the prices of Bitcoin and Ethereum today due to the expiring options, while on the other hand, there might also be volatility tomorrow, since the US exchanges will not be able to attract capital due to the closure for the weekend

Furthermore, according to this logic, in theory, Monday could also see volatility with the reopening of the USA stock exchanges.