$2.8 Billion in Bitcoin and Ether Options Expire Friday

Roughly $2.8 billion in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) options are scheduled to expire on Friday, Nov. 13, putting one of the larger recent derivatives settlements across both markets into play.

Bitcoin contracts account for about $2.48 billion of the total, spread across roughly 34,000 contracts, according to expiry data cited by Derive. Ether options represent a much smaller share — about $300 million across 148,000 contracts.

What do the positioning numbers show?

The two books lean in opposite directions, and the contrast is the most telling detail in Friday's expiry.

• Bitcoin: put/call ratio of 0.52 and a max-pain level of $76,000.
• Ether: put/call ratio of 1.55 and a max-pain level of $2,200.

A put/call ratio below 1 signals that traders hold more call options — bets on upside — than puts, which profit from declines. Bitcoin's 0.52 reading means calls dominate its open interest by nearly two to one. Ether's 1.55 flips that picture: puts outnumber calls, a defensive posture that implies hedging or outright bearish positioning among ETH holders heading into the settlement.

Why does max pain matter here?

At expiration, the max-pain price is the level at which options holders collectively would incur the largest loss — and, by extension, the level at which option sellers (typically market makers) pay out the least. Bitcoin's max pain sits at $76,000; Ether's at $2,200.

These marks give traders a reference point for where pinning pressure can appear as expiry approaches. Sellers with large short-gamma exposure have an incentive to hedge in ways that can nudge the spot price toward the max-pain level into the settlement window, a dynamic well documented around large monthly and weekly expiries.

Where is spot trading relative to the strikes?

Bitcoin traded below its $76,000 max-pain level, after touching a range of $72,700 to $73,300 earlier this week. That gap matters for the expiry mechanics: with spot sitting several thousand dollars under max pain, a meaningful share of the outstanding calls is positioned out of the money heading into Friday's settlement.

The intraday sentiment data adds a wrinkle. Bitcoin's put/call volume ratio reached about 1.64 at one point over the previous 24 hours, even though calls remained the larger share of open interest. In plain terms, near-term trading activity tilted bearish even as the standing book stayed call-heavy — a divergence between what traders were opening and what they were already holding.

What happens after Friday?

Ether's expiry is the smaller of the two, but its put-heavy structure makes it the one to watch for sentiment read-through. If ETH settles near or above $2,200, a substantial portion of that defensive put book expires worthless, potentially relieving some of the hedging pressure behind it. Bitcoin's settlement, meanwhile, turns on whether spot can close the distance to $76,000 before the contracts expire Friday.