Traders Hedge Hard: Bitcoin Put Volume Outpaces Calls 54.87% to 45.13%
Key Takeaways: The biggest open interest positions are split between December 2026 bets on bitcoin reaching $120,000 and a put at $60,000 for the same date, each holding over 6,000 BTC in size. Closer in, the April 24 put at $62,000 carries 4,648 BTC in open interest. That contract pays out if bitcoin drops below $62,000 before April 24 settlement, and enough traders own it to make it worth watching. CME options open interest by expiration bucket via Cryptoquant shows a notable rotation. As of early April, the dominant concentration sits in the one-to-two-month expiry range, with longer-dated contracts filling in modestly below. The overall CME options OI by contract count has dropped to roughly 10,000 contracts, near its lowest level since mid-2024. The put-versus-call breakdown on CME shows puts consistently dominating the stacked open interest by USD value since November 2025, a pattern that has held even as price partially recovered from its lows near $65,000. Max pain levels on Deribit show the April 24 expiry clustered near $70,000, with notional value for that date reaching approximately $6 billion. Deribit’s max pain curve peaks around $77,000 to $78,000 at the June 26 expiry before pulling back toward $75,000 through the September and December 2026 contracts. On Binance, max pain for the April 24 date sits near $71,500, while the June and September contracts carry max pain levels pushing toward $90,000. OKX shows a similar April 24 max pain near $71,000, with the September 2026 contract carrying a max pain reading close to $80,000. All three venues share a common theme: with spot bitcoin sitting at $66,810, current prices sit roughly $3,000 to $4,000 below the nearest max pain concentration at the April 24 expiry. That gap creates gravitational pull, at least in theory, as options market makers have an incentive to see price drift higher into settlement. Whether the broader macro environment or Trump’s statements allow that drift is another question entirely. The current pullback in both open interest and price is consistent with prior mid-cycle consolidation phases. Derivatives traders watching the April 24 expiry will find the $62,000 put and $72,000 call strikes carrying the most open interest weight at Deribit in the near term. The $75,000 call at the same expiry also sits in the top tier by open interest. With spot at $66,810, the market is positioned between those strikes, leaving outcomes reasonably open in either direction as expiry approaches. Right now, bitcoin‘s derivatives market is telling a cautious story, and the upcoming expiry is the next real test.Max Pain Curves
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