The options market is not showing any sharp signals yet. But traders’ caution on Deribit is gradually building up tension, which may manifest in the coming days.
On Friday, options worth about $3.18 billion expired on the platform. The event itself passed calmly and did not cause any sharp movements. However, this was just a small weekly expiration compared to a larger monthly, quarterly, and yearly closing scheduled for next week.
Traders are hedging against a decline in Bitcoin
The main volume was in Bitcoin. According to Deribit, BTC options with a notional value of about $2.7 billion expired. At the same time, the price of Bitcoin stayed near the max pain zone around $88,000.
What is more important is that this time, market participants did not try to push the price to the max pain level. Options are increasingly being used as a hedging tool rather than for speculative pressure.
The position structure indicates growing interest in put options below $91,000. The highest concentration of protective bets formed around $85,000, which looks like insurance in case the correction deepens.
The put/call ratio for the weekly expiration was 0.8. This means that calls still slightly prevail, but the balance no longer looks aggressively bullish. Above $91,000, call bets dominate, while below — protection against decline.
In fact, traders are preparing for an exit scenario in case of a move to $80,000. Historically, weekly expirations have often been accompanied by increased volatility over the weekend, but now the pressure on BTC and ETH prices may smooth out the effect.
ETH looks more resilient than BTC
Together with Bitcoin, ETH options worth about $460 million also expired on Friday. The max pain level for Ethereum was around $3,100, while before expiration the price was trading near $2,953.
The distribution of strikes for ETH is more even. The main liquidity of protective positions is concentrated higher — around $3,500. This may indicate more neutral or even moderately positive expectations for Ethereum.
Unlike BTC, the ETH options market looks less tense. Sentiment here is closer to balance, without a clear tilt toward protection.
The options market is preparing for year-end closing
In the fourth quarter of 2025, activity in the options market noticeably decreased. After a large expiration at the end of the third quarter, open interest on Deribit declined and stabilized.
If at the end of Q3 total open interest exceeded $46 billion, by December the figure dropped to $39 billion and has hardly changed over the past three months. Weekly expirations have become smaller in volume, although the basic level of liquidity remains higher than at the beginning of autumn.
The key event will be December 26. On this day, options worth about $23 billion will expire — more than half of the current open interest. The remaining positions will be rolled over to the next quarter.
After the yearly expiration, the options market may start gaining liquidity again. In the past, derivatives have reacted to price shocks with a lag. The autumn drop in October, on the contrary, increased interest in options as a hedging tool and for targeted bets.
Pressure remains on futures as well
Bitcoin price stagnation also affects the derivatives market as a whole. Interest in futures is declining along with volatility.
Open interest in BTC futures remains around $27 billion and has hardly changed since the October drop. This indicates a wait-and-see attitude among participants and a lack of a confident trend.
What’s next?
Deribit options have not yet become a catalyst for sharp moves, but the market structure is changing. Traders are increasingly hedging against declines and pricing in negative scenarios, especially for Bitcoin.
Amid a large yearly expiration, this increases market sensitivity. If the price moves out of the current range, the options market may amplify the movement — even if the impulse itself comes from outside.
Read more: 15 best crypto exchanges by the end of 2025 and forecast for 2026
