Roughly 149,000 bitcoin options contracts worth about $9.57 billion in notional value settled at 08:00 UTC on Friday on Deribit, the exchange that handles most crypto options trading. It was the largest monthly settlement of the quarter, and it cleared with bitcoin near $64,800, about 8% below the $70,000 strike where traders had stacked the most conviction. The headline casualty is a single call spread worth roughly $2.5 billion in gross notional that needed bitcoin above $70,000 to pay out. It finished out of the money.
A call option is a contract giving the buyer the right to buy bitcoin at a set price on a set date, so a call expires worthless when the market price sits below that strike.
Key takeaways
- About 149,000 bitcoin contracts worth $9.57 billion expired Friday, with ether contracts pushing the total crypto settlement to roughly $10.4 billion.
- Max pain sat near $64,000, close to spot, meaning an unusually large share of contracts settled near the money.
- Open interest at the $70,000 and $72,000 strikes stood at about $2.4 billion each, close to 18% of Deribit’s $28 billion bitcoin options book.
- The put/call ratio of 0.28 shows the expiry was dominated by upside bets that never came due.
Published: July 31, 2026, 09:15 UTC
What expired and where the money sat
The put/call ratio for Friday’s batch was 0.28, meaning close to four call contracts expired for every put. Deribit put max pain near $64,000, within a few hundred dollars of where bitcoin was trading. Max pain is the price at which option sellers collectively owe the least at settlement, and it describes where bets have accumulated rather than exerting any force on price.
The concentration was extreme at two strikes. Deribit’s board carried roughly $2.4 billion of open interest at $70,000 and the same again at $72,000, together close to 18% of the exchange’s entire $28 billion bitcoin options book. As of July 20, about 27,000 contracts sat at $70,000 and around 21,000 at $72,000, with calls dominating both.
The $2.5 billion trade that needed $70,000
One structure accounted for a large share of that open interest. Deribit chief commercial officer Jean-David Péquignot described a single block that bought 20,000 of the $70,000 calls and sold 20,000 of the $72,000 calls, a combination worth about $2.5 billion in gross notional across both legs. We covered that position when it was opened.
Gross notional is not money at risk. The buyer paid a premium, reduced by selling the higher strike, and that premium is what was lost. The structure needed bitcoin above $70,000 to return anything at all, and Deribit’s own pricing had put the odds of bitcoin merely touching $70,000 during July at 14.5%, with $72,000 at 4.1%.
The timing was deliberate. Jimmy Yang of institutional liquidity provider Orbit Markets tied the July 31 call demand to expectations that the CLARITY Act would clear the Senate before the August recess. That thesis has decayed. Polymarket now prices 2026 passage at roughly 35%, down from above 80% in February, after a merged Banking-Agriculture draft dropped ethics provisions Democrats had demanded and drew formal opposition from Senators Chris Murphy, Chris Van Hollen and Jeff Merkley. Charles Schwab publicly backed the bill last weekend, but the calendar is now the binding constraint.
Why bitcoin did not move into settlement
The expiry landed two days after the Federal Reserve held its benchmark rate at 3.50% to 3.75% for a fourth consecutive meeting on July 29, in a 9-3 vote. Cleveland’s Beth Hammack, Minneapolis’s Neel Kashkari and Dallas’s Lorie Logan all dissented in favor of a quarter-point increase, an outcome that removed the rate-cut catalyst the $70,000 bet implicitly required. Crypto liquidations hit $286 million in the hours after the decision.
Two identically sized weekly expiries earlier in July cleared without moving bitcoin in either direction, which undercuts the argument that options positioning had been suppressing price. Spot demand has simply been thin. Bitcoin is down about 25.4% year to date, US spot bitcoin ETFs still carry roughly $4.84 billion in cumulative net outflows for 2026, and month-end institutional rebalancing added another layer of mechanical selling into Friday’s session.
What comes next
With the July board cleared, the largest block of upside open interest in the bitcoin options market is gone, and August positioning starts close to flat. That removes a talking point rather than a constraint. Traders will now watch whether the Senate moves on market structure legislation in the narrow window after the recess, whether ETF flows turn consistently positive, and whether September Fed guidance shifts after three officials broke ranks in July. Deribit’s next monthly settlement falls on August 28.
Frequently asked questions
Does a large options expiry move bitcoin’s price?
Not reliably. Two identically sized weekly expiries settled in July under opposite max pain conditions and bitcoin finished in roughly the same place both times. Expiries redistribute positioning, but spot demand determines direction.
What is max pain in bitcoin options?
Max pain is the price at which option sellers would owe the least money at settlement, calculated from currently open contracts. It is a snapshot of where bets sit, not a mechanism that pulls price toward any level.
Did the trader behind the $2.5 billion position lose $2.5 billion?
No. That figure is gross notional, the face value of the bitcoin referenced by both legs. The actual loss is the net premium paid to open the spread, a small fraction of the notional amount.
