Deribit's June 26 quarterly expiry cleared $10.63 billion in combined Bitcoin and Ethereum notional, with Bitcoin settling roughly $10,000 below the $70,000 max-pain strike where most open interest was concentrated.
Bitcoin options accounted for $9.06 billion of the total, while Ethereum made up the remaining $1.57 billion, per NewsBTC and BeInCrypto. Max pain, the strike at which the greatest number of contracts expire worthless and historically cited as a gravitational pull on spot price, stood at $70,000 for Bitcoin and $2,000 for Ethereum.
Bitcoin settled near $60,200 at the 8:00 UTC window. Ethereum settled near $1,580, per BeInCrypto. Both assets landed well below their respective max pain levels, weakening the case that options positioning could pull spot toward the largest open-interest strikes at settlement.
Bitcoin's put/call ratio at expiry was 0.63, with 92,154 calls against 57,652 puts. Calls dominated open interest. With Bitcoin settling $10,000 below the main concentration, the majority of bullish contracts expired out of the money.
Deribit's own market analysis, cited by crypto.news, said "recent quarterly expiries have shown limited evidence of a consistent pinning effect ahead of settlement."
The competing pressure came from ETF redemptions. US-listed Bitcoin ETFs posted $3.4 billion in net outflows over a single week in early June, the largest weekly exit since the products launched in January 2024, per Investing.com.
That selling pace outweighed any mechanical support the options positioning might otherwise have provided heading into a major quarterly settlement.
Bitcoin's intraday low during the expiry week reached $58,189 per crypto.news before recovering near the $60,000 settlement level.