Ether Price Under Pressure As $6b In Options Expiry Nears 2025

ETH options data shows investors increasing downside protection as the year-end $6 billion options expry approaches, signaling caution.

Ether (ETH) has been unable to sustain prices above $3,400 for the past 40 days, raising concerns among traders that bears may remain in control for longer.

$6B in Ether options will expire on Friday, with call (buy) bets outnumbering put (sell) instruments by 2.2 times.

Bears hold the advantage unless ETH price breaks $3,100.

The $6 billion ETH options expiry on Friday may add further pressure, as bulls had anticipated year-end prices of $4,000 or higher before the 28% crash in November.

Ether’s price at 8:00 am UTC on Friday will determine whether bears retain control, despite call options outnumbering put instruments by a factor of 2.2.

Deribit accounts for 70% of total open interest, followed by the Chicago-based CME with 20%. However, most of the $4.1 billion in call options are set to expire worthless on Friday, as traders concentrated bullish bets on year-end Ether prices between $3,500 and $5,000.

Less than 15% of aggregate call options were positioned at $3,000 or lower.

Related: Trend Research quietly becomes one of Ethereum’s largest whales with 46K ETH buy

Even excluding overly optimistic calls at $5,000 and above, which likely carried limited cost to buyers, data shows that fewer than 25% of these instruments were placed below $3,200.

Source: CoinTelegraph