At 8 a.m. UTC on December 25, 132,411 Bitcoin in open contracts expire on the options exchange Deribit. At the price of $82,009 on Thursday midday that is around $10.9 billion, and it is the second-largest expiry currently on the books. To see where the market expects Bitcoin at the turn of the year, look at that book: it holds the most honest answer available, not an opinion but money someone has actually put down.
The documented figures: the calculated centre of gravity of this expiry sits at $78,000, which is $4,009 below today’s price, while 35,862 Bitcoin in call options sit at strikes of $100,000 and above. Our assessment follows further down. The two numbers contradict each other only in appearance, and taken together they describe a market that hedges on the way down and hopes cheaply on the way up.
Our Bitcoin price prediction tracks how the picture fits together over a horizon of months. This piece takes on the single date that bundles everything in December.
What expires on December 25: 132,411 Bitcoin in open contracts
An option is a right, not an obligation. Whoever holds a call may take delivery of Bitcoin at the agreed strike price on the settlement date. Whoever holds a put may sell at that price. If the contract runs out without that being worthwhile, it expires worthless. Open contracts, known in the trade as open interest, are all the rights still standing at a given date.
For December 25 the Deribit book of October 22, 12:45 p.m., shows 82,148 Bitcoin in calls and 50,262 Bitcoin in puts. The put-to-call ratio is 0.61. Together that comes to 132,411 Bitcoin. Only the monthly expiry on October 30 is heavier, at 136,292 Bitcoin, and that one will be history in eight days.
The number looks large, and it shrinks quickly in context. Around 19.9 million Bitcoin are in circulation, so the December expiry covers barely 0.7 percent of the supply. What makes it matter anyway is the concentration: this money does not sit evenly spread out, it clusters at a handful of strikes, and those clusters are exactly where the levels form that the price will rub against in December.
Max pain at $78,000: what the number says and what it does not
Max pain is the price at which the sum of all open contracts carries the least intrinsic value on expiry day. For this date it sits at $78,000. Put differently: were Bitcoin to settle exactly there on December 25, as much as possible would expire worthless, and the writers, meaning the sellers of the options, would keep more premium than in any other outcome.
Caution is in order here, because the term is routinely stretched too far. Max pain is neither a forecast nor a target. It is a snapshot of a book that shifts daily, and it says nothing about whether anyone can or wants to drive the price there. In a market worth more than $1.6 trillion, an options book of $10.9 billion does not move the price on its own.
What the number does deliver is a different piece of information. The metric shows where the weight of the book lies. A level of $78,000 below the current price means the bulk of the options sold were written when Bitcoin traded lower or was expected to trade lower. The market has moved up since then, and the book has followed that path only in part.
The call wall from $100,000 up: 35,862 Bitcoin on distant strikes
The chart above shows a distribution with two centres. The first sits close to the action: the band between $80,000 and $89,999 holds 22,482 Bitcoin in calls and 5,524 in puts. The round strike of $80,000 alone carries 11,287 Bitcoin, the largest single position of the entire expiry.
The second centre sits far above. Strikes of $100,000 and higher hold 35,862 Bitcoin in calls, or 43.7 percent of every call at this date. The $100,000 strike alone accounts for 6,089 Bitcoin, with another 5,958 at $120,000.
These positions are cheap, and that is where their message lies. Bitcoin would have to gain 22 percent by December 25 just to reach $100,000, and 46 percent to crack $120,000. Options covering such distances cost little because they rarely pay off. The fact that so many of them sit in the book shows hope with a small stake, not conviction with a large one. The all-time high of $126,080 dates from October 6, 2025 and has not been reached since.
The put side down to $70,000: 37,229 Bitcoin of downside protection
The underside mirrors that picture, and it is the more serious part of the book. Strikes of $70,000 and below hold 37,229 Bitcoin in put options, or 74.1 percent of every put at this date. Down to $60,000 the figure is still 30,313 Bitcoin. The thick single position sits at $60,000 with 6,784 Bitcoin.
Nobody buys puts at $60,000 because they expect that price. They buy them because they hold a position they do not want to sell, and because a 27 percent slide would cost them too much. That distribution is typical of holders hedging, not of speculators betting on a fall. The put-to-call ratio of 0.61 supports the reading: the book holds markedly more calls than puts.
Between $70,000 and $90,000 it thins out. That corridor is exactly where the price is trading right now, and exactly where the options book has least to say. Anyone expecting quiet weeks in December will find no contradiction in the book.
How an expiry date affects the price at all
The mechanism is less spectacular than it is usually made out to be. Whoever sells an option carries the risk and hedges it in the spot market. When the price moves towards a strike where many calls sit, the writer has to hold more Bitcoin to stay able to deliver, and buys. When the price falls, the writer sells again. That running adjustment is called delta hedging.
Close to large strikes the effect is usually a damping one, because the hedging purchases and sales run against the move. If the price breaks clean through a cluster, however, the same mechanism can amplify the move, because every writer has to buy in the same direction. At $80,000, with 11,287 Bitcoin, sits the largest such cluster of this expiry.
One point matters for the framing: the effect is strongest in the days immediately before an expiry, not two months ahead. For today’s price the December book says little. For the week around Christmas it says a great deal. If you approach dates like these with leveraged products, know what the platform costs; our comparison of perp DEX platforms shows which providers settle how.
Futures at $82,763: what the December contract reveals about expectations
Alongside the options book, a second look at the futures market pays off. The December future on Deribit stood at $82,763 on Thursday midday, 0.92 percent above spot. Annualised, that works out at around 5.5 percent. The June 2027 future sits at $84,936, 3.58 percent above spot, a similar annual rate.
This structure is called contango and is the normal state of affairs: buying Bitcoin forward ties up no capital, and that convenience carries a premium. It only gets interesting next to the level of interest rates. The Federal Reserve’s target range currently sits at 3.75 to 4.00 percent, so the futures market pays a little more than the risk-free rate, but not much. In euphoric phases those premiums have run beyond 15 percent a year.
The funding rate of the perpetual contract fits that picture at 0.0026 percent per eight hours. The value is mildly positive, which means buyers are paying sellers, but it sits far from the readings that mark an overheated market. The volatility index DVOL, at 37.9, is also in the lower part of its usual range.
The rate decision on October 28 comes two days before the October expiry
Before the December date becomes relevant, a closer one is due. The Federal Reserve meets on October 27 and 28 according to its own calendar, with the decision landing on Wednesday, October 28. Two days later, on October 30, the 136,292 Bitcoin of the October expiry run out.
That sequence is the more important one for the coming weeks. The rate decision supplies the trigger, the expiry the amplification. Should the decision land differently than expected, the reaction will hit a book whose writers have to adjust their hedges immediately beforehand.
For the December expiry that means one thing: it will change its face several times before then. Open interest is not a fixed amount. After October 30 many positions roll on into December, and the picture that holds today can look markedly different in four weeks.
What has changed since our prediction of October 21
On October 21 we wrote in this space about the mining difficulty adjustment and named $83,691 as the next target. That target was reached. The price rose as far as $84,808 and then fell back; on Thursday midday it stands at $82,009. The full calculation from that day sits in our prediction on mining difficulty of October 21.
What remains open is the counter-test: the breakout did not hold. Within 24 hours the price went from $84,808 to a low of $81,607, a distance of 3.9 percent, and it is now back in the old corridor. For the levels that is a clear shift. The $84,808 mark has turned from a target into resistance, and $81,607 is the fresh support that will be tested first.
What is new is the view beyond the turn of the year that this piece supplies. The levels of the December book sit considerably further apart than the daily marks: $70,000 below as the start of dense hedging, $100,000 above as the start of the hope zone.
Our assessment: the options market is not pricing year-end fireworks
From the newsroom’s point of view, this book shows a sober market. Three things argue for that reading, and all of them appear above with numbers: the centre of gravity at $78,000 sits below the price, the hedging crowds in with 37,229 Bitcoin below $70,000, and the futures premium of 5.5 percent a year barely exceeds the policy rate. A market counting on a year-end rally looks different.
Against that stands the call side. 35,862 Bitcoin at strikes from $100,000 up are no trifle, and they were bought cheaply. Should a trigger arrive that is strong enough, those very positions would amplify the move, because the writers would then have to buy on the way up. The direction therefore stays open; only the costs of the two scenarios are distributed differently today.
What follows is not a buy or sell recommendation but a frame. Between $70,000 and $100,000 the December book carries little weight. Inside that range the price is driven by other things: the rate decision, fund flows, the news cycle. Only at the edges does the options book speak up.
Year-end expiry on December 25: three levels for your turn of the year
For an investor in Europe this translates into three concrete points.
- Note the levels, not the opinions. $81,607 as fresh support, $84,808 as new resistance, $70,000 and $100,000 as the edges of the December book. If you are planning an order, place it at these documented points rather than at round numbers. Our comparison of crypto exchanges shows where you trade at which fees.
- Look up the purchase date of every holding. If you are weighing a sale before the turn of the year, you first need the date on which the position in question was bought. How lawmakers currently treat the one-year holding period is something we track on our page crypto holding period: state of the reform.
- Document the holdings cleanly. Holdings spread across several exchanges and wallets make purchase dates easy to lose track of. Which tools pull the records together automatically is set out in our comparison of tax tools and portfolio trackers.
The figures in this piece come from the public options book of Deribit and the meeting calendar of the Federal Reserve. The price comes from CoinGecko.
(As of October 22, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)