Crypto Markets Flounder Ahead of Friday’s Mammoth Options Expiry

Markets dropped slightly on Wednesday in choppy trading as traders awaited U.S. economic data ahead of a major options expiry on Friday.

Bitcoin has fallen 1% to $61,000 in the past 24 hours, while Ether is trading nearly 2% lower. Meanwhile, Solana dipped 2% after rallying 8% yesterday.

Most of the top 100 digital assets by market capitalization are in the red or flat today, with the exception of Fetch.ai (FET), Notcoin (NOT), and SingularityNET (AGIX), which are up 5% or more. Recently launched tokens from ZkSync (ZK) and LayerZero (ZRO) continue to bleed.

The sideways price action comes as Bitcoin options with a notional value of $6.6 billion – representing more than 40% of total open interest, according to options platform Deribit – are set to expire on June 28.

Nearly half the outstanding Ether options worth nearly $3.5 billion will expire at the same time.

According to Deribit, the so-called ‘max pain’ levels – the price at which the largest number of option holders will incur losses – for BTC and ETH are $57,000 and $3,400, respectively. Bitcoin is trading around 6.5% above its threshold with two days to go, while Ether is roughly 8% higher.

Stock markets are flat on the day ahead of U.S. jobless claims and consumer spending reports expected on Thursday and Friday. Investors will be looking for signs of cooling inflation and a weakening labour market, which could justify the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates later this year.