Will markets break resistance when $2 billion worth of crypto options expire today?

Friday has rolled around again, meaning more Bitcoin and Ether options are expiring as spot markets hold on to recent gains.

About 22,200 Bitcoin options contracts will expire on Friday, April 17, with a notional value of about $1.66 billion. This event is slightly smaller than last week’s expiration, so it is unlikely to have any impact on the spot markets.

Cryptocurrency prices have been slowly rising this week, with around $150 billion added to the total market capitalization since Monday.

Bitcoin options expiration

This week’s set of Bitcoin options contracts has a put/call ratio of 1, meaning that put and put sellers are evenly matched. The maximum pain is around $71,000, according to Coinglass, which is slightly below current spot prices, so some may be out of the money at expiration.

Open interest (OI), or the value or number of Bitcoin options contracts that have not yet expired, remains at a high of $80,000 on Deribit, with $1.5 billion as bullish bets dominate, but bears still have $1.4 billion in OI at $60,000.

Total BTC options OI across all exchanges has risen steadily this month and reached $35.6 billion, according to Coinglass.

“Positioning has shifted from last week. BTC flipped from heavy buying to leading buying, while ETH OI grew weekly despite the broader market’s move,” commented Derbit.

🚨 Options expiration alert.
At 08:00 UTC tomorrow, approximately $2.1 billion worth of cryptocurrency options on Deribit are set to expire.$ Bitcoin: ~ $1.63 billion virtual | Mode/Connection: 1.02 | Max Payne: $71,000 $ Ethereum: ~ $444.7 million virtual | Mode/Connect: 0.94 | Max Payne: $2,250

The situation has changed since last week. Bitcoin flipped from… pic.twitter.com/VMjM3W3XSV

– Deribit (@DeribitOfficial) April 16, 2026

As the price of Bitcoin continues to rebound, “the IV (implied volatility) of key term options is actually decreasing, while the skew is clearly positively skewed.” male Cryptocurrency derivatives provider Greeks Live this week.

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“The market has undergone a readjustment of its positional strategies, and key participants have reached a consensus on the expected trends for the future – low volatility has become the market trend.”

In addition to today’s batch of Bitcoin options, there are about 196,000 Ethereum contracts expiring as well, with a notional value of $460 million, maximum pain at $2,225, and a call/sell ratio of 0.91. The total ETH OI options across all exchanges is approximately $7.4 billion.

Real time market forecast

The total market cap is currently at a ten-week high of $2.64 trillion, but is facing resistance here as it did in mid-March. Bitcoin is Hovering It turned resistance at $75,000 and failed to make any progress above this key price area.

Ethereum ended the week in Asia at around $2,345 after rising 7% over the past seven days. Altcoins were generally mixed on Friday morning, with bigger gains for XRP, Solana, Dogecoin, Cardano, and MemeCore, which were up 32%.