Bitcoin faces $14 billion options expiry while Middle East turmoil mounts

Bitcoin’s largest options expiry of the year is colliding with geopolitical volatility that shows no sign of letting up with make or break peace talks uncertain. 

Roughly $14 billion of Bitcoin options are set to expire Friday, as measured by the number for outstanding contracts, known as open interest. The quarterly rollover—which wipes out close to 40% of open positions on the dominant Deribit exchange—comes amid conflicting signals on the prospect of a halt to the nearly month-long war in the Middle East.

The overlap is sharpening a key question for traders: whether the expiry has been artificially muting Bitcoin’s price swings and if its removal will expose the token to a sharper move driven by geopolitics.

Bitcoin has been stuck between roughly $60,000 and $75,000 in recent weeks, drifting well below its October 2025 peak of around $126,000 after a market-wide crash on Oct. 10. The lack of direction has persisted despite geopolitical tensions and intermittent inflows into U.S. exchange-traded funds. Bitcoin fell as much as 4% to $68,122 on Thursday. 

Derivatives positioning helps explain the calm, according to market participants. Institutional investors spent much of the first quarter selling upside bets—effectively wagering that prices wouldn’t rise sharply—to generate income in a subdued market, said James Harris, chief executive officer at asset manager Tesseract. That a...