Bitcoin and Ether options carrying a combined notional value of approximately $10.43 billion expired on July 31, completing one of the month’s largest cryptocurrency derivatives settlements. The expiry included about 149,000 Bitcoin options valued at $9.6 billion and 435,000 Ether options worth roughly $830 million, according to options analytics platform Greeks.live.
Bitcoin accounted for more than 90% of the combined notional value, making its positioning the dominant feature of the event. The settlement cleared a large block of call-heavy exposure without immediately pushing either asset outside its recent trading range, leaving traders to assess how the market would reposition after the monthly contracts disappeared.
Bitcoin Expiry Centers on the $64,000 Level
The contracts expired at 08:00 UTC, the standard settlement time for Deribit’s monthly options on the final Friday of the month. Deribit calculates the official delivery price using a 30-minute time-weighted average of its underlying index between 07:30 and 08:00 UTC, rather than relying on a single spot-price reading at the moment of expiry.
Tomorrow is Deribit’s weekly expiry.
At 08:00 UTC tomorrow, ~$10.3B in BTC and ETH options are set to expire on Deribit.$BTC : ~$9.5B notional | P/C: 0.28| Max Pain: $64K$ETH : ~$819.3M notional | P/C: 0.59| Max Pain: $1.8K
This creates massive liquidity and volatility,… pic.twitter.com/gNMJ8WWpgF
— Deribit (@DeribitOfficial) July 30, 2026
Greeks.live placed Bitcoin’s maximum-pain level at $64,000. Max pain is an estimate of the settlement price at which aggregate option-holder payouts would be minimized, based on the distribution of open contracts across strike prices. It is not part of Deribit’s formal settlement formula and does not guarantee that Bitcoin will move toward that level.
Bitcoin’s put-call ratio stood at 0.28, indicating that calls substantially outnumbered puts within the expiring positions. The imbalance reflected a strong concentration of upside options, but it did not necessarily represent a straightforward bullish forecast, because calls can also form part of spreads, hedges and volatility strategies rather than isolated directional bets.
Shortly after settlement, Bitcoin traded near $63,824, placing it slightly below the stated maximum-pain estimate. The proximity between the market price and the $64,000 level was notable, but it did not establish that the options expiry caused the price to remain there. Bitcoin continued trading within a daily range extending from roughly $63,787 to $65,305.
Call-Heavy Positioning Fails to Produce a Breakout
Greeks.live estimated that approximately 30% of outstanding options exposure expired during the session. The analytics firm also described implied volatility as persistently low and said capital inflows into the cryptocurrency market remained limited. Those conditions helped frame the expiry as a major positioning reset rather than an immediate volatility catalyst, although the assessment represented Greeks.live’s market interpretation.
Ethereum’s expiry carried a more balanced, though still call-heavy, profile. The 435,000 expiring ETH options had a put-call ratio of 0.63 and a maximum-pain estimate of $1,850, compared with an Ether market price of approximately $1,891 shortly after settlement. The asset remained within its established range instead of producing a sharp post-expiry move.
Large concentrations of options can affect short-term market mechanics because dealers frequently adjust their underlying positions as option deltas change. Delta hedging may require market makers to buy or sell the underlying asset as prices move around heavily populated strikes, particularly when contracts approach expiration and gamma exposure becomes more sensitive.
That mechanism can contribute to temporary price concentration near important strikes, but it should not be treated as proof of manipulation or as a reliable directional signal. No available evidence establishes that dealer hedging alone pinned Bitcoin near $64,000 during the July 31 settlement, and broader spot demand, liquidity and macroeconomic conditions remained relevant to price formation.
The immediate market response was ultimately restrained relative to the size of the expiry. More than $10 billion in Bitcoin and Ether options cleared without producing a confirmed breakout in either direction, shifting attention toward newly opened positions, changes in implied volatility and whether fresh capital enters the market after the monthly reset.