Deribit's $10.6B Quarterly Options Expiry: Why 80% of Bullish Bets Expired Worthless

Expiry Size & Notional Breakdown

The settlement included roughly 150,000 Bitcoin contracts (notional value ~$9.06 billion) and 1 million Ethereum contracts (notional value ~$1.57 billion) . Pre-expiry estimates from Bloomberg and other outlets had pegged BTC-only notional at roughly $10 billion, with total Bitcoin options open interest across all venues nearing $34.5 billion — of which Deribit's June 26 expiry accounted for about 79% of market share .

Max Pain Levels & Put/Call Ratios

The expiry settled with the following key metrics :

A put/call ratio below 1.0 indicates more call (bullish) than put (bearish) open interest. Both assets leaned bullish heading into expiry, but the realized spot prices were far below max pain. Some pre-expiry reports had BTC max pain at $72,000 and put/call ratios near 0.81–0.83, reflecting a more cautious positioning profile than a cleanly bullish board .

Bullish Positioning Losses

The bearish June selloff devastated bullish option holders:

• ~$8.6 billion of the combined open interest (roughly 80% of the total) expired out of the money (OTM), meaning the vast majority of bullish call bets became worthless .
• Bitcoin spot price ahead of expiry was near $59,648 — roughly $12,000 below the $72,000 max pain level reported by some sources, and about $10,000 below the $70,000 final max pain .
• BTC briefly fell to $59,175 on June 25 before recovering above $61,000, with total crypto liquidations approaching $1 billion during the selloff .
• Nearly all bullish call options at strikes above $70,000–$72,000 expired worthless, representing a massive destruction of leveraged long premium.

Post-Expiry Price Dynamics & Analyst Views

• Analysts at Bloomberg noted that with most contracts representing optimistic positions and Bitcoin sliding, traders were likely to shift toward more defensive or outright bearish stances into the close, potentially deepening the selloff .
• Cointelegraph observed that bears held the upper hand ahead of the expiry, especially with Bitcoin trapped below $74,000, and that clearing the deck could remove a "price pin" but not change the underlying bearish momentum .
• VanEck (mid-June ChainCheck) said holders were not taking profit but rather capitulating and selling at a loss, with pressure concentrated in spot products rather than derivatives — pointing to genuine risk reduction rather than hedging .
• Some analysts suggested the option expiry itself could act as a short-term volatility event, but the macro headwinds (ETF outflows, miner stress, weak demand) were likely to persist post-expiry .

Broader Bearish Backdrop

The options expiry occurred inside a deeply bearish macro environment for crypto:

Bitcoin ETF Outflows

• U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $469 million in net outflows on June 24 alone, with Ethereum ETFs losing an additional $30 million .
• Over the preceding 30 days, Bitcoin ETFs saw total outflows of approximately $6.35 billion — described as the weakest performance since launch .
• Over three weeks ending June 26, total BTC ETF outflows exceeded $4.21 billion .

Miner Capitulation

• Bitcoin miners entered a "capitulation" phase, with profit margins below 5% and miner revenues deeply compressed .
• Hashrate declined by more than 25% since October 2025, one of the longest sustained drawdowns on record, suggesting significant mining capacity exited the network .
• The Puell Multiple fell to 0.74, a level historically associated with miner financial distress .
• Roughly 20% of network hashrate was estimated to be operating below break-even, raising the risk of forced miner selling into any rally .

Declining Risk Appetite & Institutional Demand

• Institutional interest was described as "diminished" with a "challenging macroeconomic environment" curbing appetite .
• BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF saw a single-day outflow of $182 million on June 23, indicating even the largest institutional players were reducing exposure .
• Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) mNAV hit 0.72, suggesting its Bitcoin-heavy equity was trading at a significant discount to its BTC holdings .
• XRP and Solana ETFs saw negligible or flat flows, while Ethereum ETFs also bled, confirming broad-based risk-off sentiment across crypto asset classes .