Bitcoin
Roughly $15.9 billion in bitcoin options and $2.1 billion in ether options expire at 8:00 UTC., according to Deribit CEO Luuk Strijers. The BTC expiry alone will shave off 37% of Deribit’s entire outstanding BTC open interest, around $43.5 billion as of this writing. Open interest here refers to the dollar value of active options contracts. Each contract represents one BTC or one ETH.
“This Friday's quarterly expiry Sept. 25 is one of the largest of the year on Deribit,” Strijers told CoinDesk. “The September contract remains call-heavy, with a put/call open-interest ratio of 0.69 — positioning that was built for higher prices.”
A call option is a derivative contract that gives the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy an underlying asset at a fixed price (the strike) by a set date (expiration).
Think of it as paying a $100 premium to reserve the right to buy a $1,000 laptop anytime in the next four weeks. If the laptop’s price jumps to $1,200, you exercise your right and effectively save $200 (minus your $100 token). If the price stays at or below $1,000, you let the reservation lapse and lose only the $100.
Traders use call options to profit from an impending surge in the underlying asset, in this case, BTC or ETH. Put options do the opposite by protecting the buyer from a potential sell-off in the underlying asset.
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