- Bitcoin calls outnumber puts by roughly 1.44 to 1 ahead of Friday’s settlement.
- BTC trades about 14% above its $75,000 max-pain level.
- Bitcoin remains 6.8% above its 365-day moving average near $80,350 after the September breakout.
The September 25 settlement brings unusually large BTC and ETH positioning into a market that has already moved sharply higher, leaving both assets well above their respective max-pain levels.
Bitcoin was trading at approximately $85,780 at the time of writing, down 0.48% on the daily candle after reaching $87,283. Ethereum changed hands near $2,736 after touching $2,788.
The pullback remains small compared with the preceding rally. Bitcoin has climbed from roughly $75,000 in mid-September, while Ether has advanced from below $2,400.
Calls Dominate as Spot Moves Away From Max Pain
Bitcoin’s September 25 options book, shared by CoinBureau in X, contains approximately 184,000 contracts with $15.9 billion in notional value. Ethereum adds roughly 777,000 contracts worth $2.1 billion.
The composition of that open interest is more informative than the headline total.
Bitcoin shows 108,691 calls against 75,351 puts, equivalent to roughly 1.44 calls for every put and a put/call ratio of 0.69. Calls represent about 59% of outstanding BTC contracts.
The larger disconnect is between the options book and the spot market.
Bitcoin’s $75,000 max-pain level sits approximately 12.6% below its current price. Ether’s $2,250 max pain is about 17.8% below spot.
Those gaps show how far the rally has carried both assets from the strike distribution that would minimize aggregate option-holder payouts at expiry. They do not imply that either asset must fall toward max pain.
Max pain is calculated from outstanding options positioning. It is not a mechanism that forces the underlying market toward a particular strike, especially when spot is moving strongly in one direction.
Bitcoin’s $80,000 Breakout Adds Another Level to Watch
The expiry arrives immediately after Bitcoin cleared a longer-term technical threshold.
Bitcoin’s 365-day moving average sits near $80,353 on the hart. At around $85,780, BTC is approximately 6.6% above that level.
Its shorter moving averages remain considerably lower. The 50-day average stands near $74,557, while the 200-day average is around $70,766.
CryptoQuant research head Julio Moreno has highlighted the move above the 365-day average as a bull-market confirmation signal, comparing the setup with Bitcoin’s recovery above the same long-term trend measure in 2023.
The historical comparison does not establish that the current market will follow the same trajectory. For Friday’s expiry, the more useful point is that the 365-day average provides a technical reference well below the latest highs but above much of Bitcoin’s September trading range.
On the upside, the recent $87,283 high puts the $88,000-$90,000 region into focus if buyers attempt to extend the breakout.
Ethereum’s Options Positioning Is Even Further From Max Pain
ETH has climbed from around $2,400 on September 16 to nearly $2,800 before easing toward $2,736.
Its options positioning is heavily weighted toward calls. The expiry data show 481,261 calls among 777,109 total contracts, meaning calls account for approximately 62% of ETH open interest by contract count.
But call dominance should not be read as a direct forecast for higher prices.
Options can represent outright directional positions, hedges, spreads and more complex multi-leg strategies.
Open interest reveals where exposure exists, but not the full motivation behind every position.
What is observable is the unusually wide gap between Ether’s market price and its $2,250 max-pain level. At almost 18%, that separation is even larger than Bitcoin’s.
Liquidations Show Leverage Is Being Cleared in Both Directions
The options settlement also arrives after a sharp round of leverage reduction.
CoinGlass data show $278.06 million in liquidations over 24 hours across 88,125 traders. Shorts accounted for $167.30 million, compared with $110.76 million in longs.
The shorter windows tell a different story.
Over four hours, longs represented $38.48 million of $47.45 million in liquidations, or roughly 81%. During the latest hour, $16.69 million of the $18.54 million total came from longs, equivalent to approximately 90%.
Bitcoin recorded the largest asset-level liquidation total at $64.28 million, followed by Ether at $46.21 million.
Zcash and XRP registered $19.89 million and $16.51 million, respectively.
The sequence suggests leverage has been vulnerable on both sides. The broader advance forced bearish positions out, while the subsequent pullback caught traders who entered leveraged longs near the highs.
What Traders Should Watch on Friday
The first reference point is 08:00 UTC, when the September 25 options expire. The more useful question is not whether Bitcoin will somehow be pulled toward $75,000, but how the market behaves as a large concentration of existing options exposure disappears and positions are rolled or replaced.
- Bitcoin around $80,350: The 365-day moving average is the clearest long-term technical reference below current spot. Bitcoin can retreat substantially from its recent high before testing it.
- The $88,000-$90,000 region: A return through the latest high would put Bitcoin back against the next visible price zone above the breakout.
- Post-expiry volatility: Expiring contracts can change hedging requirements as positions settle and new exposure is established. Notional open interest alone cannot determine the direction of those flows, making the price response after settlement more informative than the expiry size itself.
Ethereum presents a similar setup. Its $2,250 max-pain level describes the structure of the expiring options book, but the nearly 18% gap to spot makes it a poor standalone forecast for where ETH should trade on Friday.
The expiry ultimately tests something more useful than the $18 billion headline: whether Bitcoin and Ether can preserve the price structure created by September’s rally once one of the year’s largest concentrations of derivatives exposure rolls off.
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