- A record $1.5 billion in ether options is set to expire on Friday.
- Experts see short and long-term opportunities arising from the volatility that may occur.
- Insider asked 6 crypto investors and influencers for their outlooks on what may happen next.
- See more stories on Insider’s business page.
Traders’ eyes are glued to their screens on Friday as $1.5 billion in ether options are expiring today.
Given ether’s initial 16% plunge and then 56% surge within three weeks after its March 26 expiry, some are calling the latest expiry a make-or-break moment for bulls and bears.
With tales of forced liquidations and million-dollar losses amid recent bouts of corrections in the crypto market, it makes sense that investors are nervous about the outcome.
Steve Ehrlich, chief executive of crypto brokerage Voyager Digital, said he expects to see more near-term price movement volatility.
He notes that among the expiring options, there is a significant amount of call options at and over $2,200, which means about 73% of the call options will be rendered worthless if ether is under this price by the time of expiry today.
On the other hand, a majority of the put options are at $2,100 or lower, meaning these options will be virtually worthless if ether’s price goes above this level, he said.
Because ether was hovering just above $2,000 as of Thursday afternoon, the price can head towards either direction.
“If it remains at this level by Friday, investors with in-the-money put options may likely exercise their contracts,” he said on Thursday, “which will cause an initial downward pressure on ETH’s price due to oversupply on the sell-side.”
Despite the near-term downward price pressure, Ehrlich said investors should not be too fixated on short-term volatility. Instead, he noticed that many Voyager users are continuing to buy ether as it holds the top spot on its 24-hour net buys.
“For many investors, ethereum is a long-term asset given its real-world use cases and accelerating technology,” he said. “While it’s possible there may be a price drop at the expiry, many will see this as a trading opportunity, and we should see positive price momentum in the long-term.”
So how should investors balance the short-term trading and long-term investing opportunities in the midst of ether’s largest options expiry this year? Insider spoke with six crypto traders, investors, and influencers to find out.
Crypto influencers
Pablo Heman, the pseudonym for a TikTok influencer with over 600,000 followers, is widely known for his price-point predictions on bitcoin and altcoins. He told Insider ethereum’s price action will depend more on bitcoin than its expiring options.
He said while ethereum’s upcoming option expiry will likely drag its price down, he believes the real impact will be tied to what bitcoin does. This is because the two are correlated and bitcoin holds a larger share of the crypto market.
In this scenario, Heman compared ethereum to an otter in bitcoin’s river. If the otter were to swim in calm waters, its price action would mainly depend on its options expiring. But if bitcoin were to increase or drop, then the otter would need to swim against a strong current and will end up trailing bitcoin.
“This is really difficult to anticipate right now because it’s not a normal period, bitcoin is in a strong downtrend. Ethereum is essentially following bitcoin. If I have to bet I would say $2,000 to $1,800 is where ethereum will be by Friday if bitcoin is anywhere between $32,000 to $29,000.”
Ian Balina, the founder and CEO of research platform Token Metrics and a crypto YouTuber, told Insider that ethereum’s price action will depend on whether the crypto dips below $2,080.
“The tipping point would be around $2,080. This is basically kind of like a tug of war happening between traders and market makers. So from there, depending where the pendulum swings, we can expect downward pressure or upward pressure on particular price points,” he said.
The tipping point is based on the 600,000 options set to expire, where about 330,000 are calls and about 270,000 are puts that make up the $1.5 billion in intrinsic value, as of June 21. Market makers will try to keep the price close to $2,080 for maximum premium intake, Balina told Insider.
“So ideally, a move in ethereum closer to $2,500 will break away from the downward pull on ethereum. But if ethereum goes below $2,080, the next level would be $1,920. If it breaks that it’s probably going down to $1,732, just looking at the way the market is going with the order book on options,” Balina said.
However, he isn’t concerned about short-term price swings because he’s bullish on the crypto and says the upgrades scheduled to take place, known as the London hard fork will make ethereum deflationary. The roll out is tentatively scheduled for later in July.
But Balina expects a delay on its price increase, adding that it may not be reflected until August. He compared it to bitcoin’s 2020 halving, when it took a few months for the upward trend to begin.
In the most bullish scenario, Balina says their models show ethereum going to $8,000 or $10,000 within the next 12 months.
Crypto traders
Scott Melker, an influential crypto trader and investor known as “The Wolf of All Streets,” told Insider that while it’s hard to predict the price impact due to a still immature ether options market, investors can look to the bitcoin options market for clues.
“There’s definitely been a history of price suppression coming into the options expiry and an explosion in price after those expires,” he said. “It usually is a short-term phenomenon but it makes sense that price would be somewhat controlled into the expiration.”
From his vantage point, the bearish traders are squarely in control of the June 25 options expiry, meaning that they stand to benefit the most if ether’s price is suppressed going into the expiry.
“Once the reins are sort of taken off, they can go wild,” he said. “I would say that you would expect price appreciation after that expiry.”
What’s also notable about this expiry is that ether is inching closer to its max pain price of $1,920, which is the strike price with the most open contract puts and calls or the price where most options would close out-of-the-money and expire worthless.
“People often point to that price as where to look for the price to likely go because that was basically the cause of the most pain for most traders,” he said. “So that’s not so far below the price at this point we’re trading at. Generally, you’d see a trend of price depression and then free price discovery after.”
Kevin Kang, a founding principal of crypto hedge fund BKCoin Capital, noticed on Wednesday that the put/call ratio had gone up from 0.81 to 0.97 in the last 24 hours, which means a lot more traders have bought puts to protect themselves against the downside as the market has been in the downward trend.
“Seems like traders are protecting the downside going into this Friday as well as buying the puts and selling calls to market makers as the spot-future basis has come in significantly, even trading in backwardation on some exchanges,” Kang said in an e-mailed interview.
As traders are buying puts and selling calls to market makers, volatility has come down over 20% this month, he noted.
“It seems logical to think that with lower volatility, higher prices will follow as we saw in last summer where the market traded sideways for a few months and the volatility came down then the ETH had explosive price gains from $200 range to over $440 within six weeks,” he said.
Indeed, Alex Clark, a sales trader at UK-based digital asset broker GlobalBlock, thinks that June 25 will likely dictate the direction of the ether spot market going forward and could assist in reaching a new all-time-high.
“Based on the March expiry which saw ether’s value drop by 16% before rebounding 56%, in the short-term, I am anticipating increased volatility and more price action to the downside,” she said.
“With that being said, there are nearly 73,000 worth of ethereum call contracts with a strike price of $5,000, 45,000 contracts at a strike price of $6,000 and 50,000 contracts at a price of $8,000, many of which are expiring before the end of the year.”
Clark said the ethereum London hard fork, which is slated for July, will introduce a deflationary mechanism, which could make the asset more attractive to long-term holders and institutional investors.
“Based on this, I am preparing for a potential decoupling of ETH from BTC as the market matures with a long-term price target of $5,500 by August 8,” she said.