Roughly $15.6 billion of Bitcoin options tied to the Sept. 25 expiry were due to settle on Deribit, with more calls than puts and max pain around the mid-$70,000s. Deribit’s own expiry rules set Friday expiries for 08:00 UTC, meaning that major block of quarterly positioning has now rolled off.
That matters because dealer hedging around large options books can influence short-term price behavior. Once the contracts expire, some of those hedges disappear or roll into later maturities, potentially changing the forces that helped keep BTC around the mid-$80,000s.
The Options Expiry Removes One Short-Term Support
The September expiry carried roughly 182,000 BTC in open contracts, including about 106,000 calls and 76,000 puts. Large call concentrations sat around $90,000 and $100,000, while max pain was much lower, near $76,000.
Max pain should not be treated as a price forecast. Deribit itself describes it as the strike where option holders would collectively receive the least intrinsic value if settlement occurred there. Its usefulness is greatest when open interest is large and expiry is close.
Bitcoin’s ability to stay well above that level suggests the derivatives event alone was not strong enough to pull BTC materially lower.
Treasury Yields Are Now the Harder Test
The macro backdrop is less forgiving.
The 10-year Treasury yield reached 5.20% on Sept. 24, while the 30-year climbed to 5.48%, its highest level since 2004, as high energy prices, resilient growth and concerns about government borrowing pushed bond yields higher.
That creates a direct challenge for Bitcoin. A 5% risk-free yield raises the hurdle for investors to hold volatile assets and tightens financial conditions across markets.
Coinpaper’s latest ETF flow update showed U.S. spot Bitcoin funds still attracting capital even as BTC struggled around $84,000, while the earlier Treasury-yield spike established how sensitive crypto has become to rates.
