Cryptocurrency giants such as Bitcoin and Ethereum have climbed on Thursday, as investors braced themselves for an imminent wave of option expiries.
The largest crypto token rose as much as 3.9% to $20,626, while Ethereum advanced as much as 5.8% to $1,108.
The global crypto market cap is $906.65 billion, a 0.95% increase over the last day, accoriding to data from CoinMarketCap.
It also said that the total crypto market volume over the last 24 hours is $65.08 billion, which makes a 4.49% decrease. The total volume in DeFi is currently $5.39 billion, 8.28% of the total crypto market 24-hour volume.
The volume of all stable coins is now $56.71 billion, which is 87.13% of the total crypto market 24-hour volume.
The gains have come before Friday’s weekly options expiry, the current quarter’s last that also coincides with futures expiries “to produce the final ‘witching’ in the first half of 2022,” as per Genesis Global Trading.
“Options open interest on Deribit indicates over $2 billion in notional for Bitcoin and $1 billion for Ether options, making this the largest on-exchange expiry on the horizon by a wide margin (~39% and ~33% of total open interest on the exchange for BTC and ETH options respectively),” Ainsley To, Gordon Grant and Noelle Acheson of Genesis said.
The Bitcoin options expiring on Friday are mostly puts for strikes around current price levels, with notional open interest concentrated around the $20,000 strike, Genesis said. For Ether, there is comparable concentration around the $1,000 strike — mostly in puts, the company stated.
Cryptocurrency markets are struggling to consolidate after declining precipitously in recent months as the US Federal Reserve hiked interest rates to fight inflation.
The collapse of the Terra/Luna ecosystem and continued concern about hedge fund Three Arrows Capital Ltd. have further rattled investors.
Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon, whose crypto ecosystem collapsed in a $40 billion wipeout in May, told the Wall Street Journal that he lost almost all his net worth in the crash.
“This doesn’t bother me,” he said in the interview with the Journal published Thursday. “I live a fairly frugal life.” Kwon told the newspaper he was probably a billionaire when the Luna token Terraform Labs backed was trading near $100. That coin is now trading at close to zero.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether the marketing of TerraUSD before it crashed violated federal investor-protection regulations.
The upcoming expiration may potentially influence price action, particularly if Bitcoin and Ethereum are right around the levels with a high concentration of options.
Read More:Bitcoin, Ethereum gain ground ahead of options expiry
