Bitcoin Slips to $77K as $6.25B Options Expire May 29 and ETFs Bleed for Fourth Day

Bitcoin News

The aerospace firm controlled by Elon Musk lodged its S-1 registration with the SEC this week, formally launching what could become the largest public offering ever attempted. The document targets a $1.75 trillion valuation alongside an $80 billion capital raise, a figure that would dwarf the $29.4 billion Saudi Aramco record from 2019. The roadshow opens June 4 with a Nasdaq debut scheduled for June 12 under the ticker SPCX. Buried inside the prospectus, the company disclosed 18,712 bitcoin valued at $1.45 billion, acquired for roughly $661 million — an unrealized position of more than 100 percent on its treasury allocation, now ranked among the largest corporate BTC holdings outside of dedicated proxies.

A block of bitcoin options worth $6.25 billion in notional value is queued to settle on Deribit at the May 29 expiry, with positioning data flagging $75,000 and $80,000 as the levels traders are actively defending. The $75,000 strike anchors the largest put concentration at $394 million, while the $80,000 call wall stretches to $532 million on the upside. The single most actively traded contract on Thursday was the $82,000 May 29 call, with roughly 1,600 contracts ($126 million notional) printed in one session. A put-to-call ratio of 0.86 across 80,535 open contracts reflects a modestly bullish skew heading into settlement, with max pain anchored near $75,000.

Spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds extended their net outflow streak to a fourth consecutive session on May 20, shedding another $70.5 million as institutional demand remained subdued below the $80,000 threshold. The cumulative drag has weighed on momentum at a moment when the asset sits roughly three percent above the $75,000 max-pain level for next week's options expiry. Funding rates across major perpetual venues hover near zero, yet leveraged long positions are still paying a premium to maintain exposure — an unusual configuration that signals reluctance to capitulate even as spot inflows fail to materialize. Analysts highlight a clean reclaim of $80,000 as the immediate hurdle.

Monday set a punishing tone for leveraged traders as crypto futures liquidations across major exchanges cleared at least $657 million in a single session, with $584 million wiped from long positions in the largest forced-selling event since early February. Open interest has since stabilized in a $36.6 billion to $37.8 billion band, marking a 14 percent drawdown from the May 6 peak. The structure of the deleveraging — concentrated rather than gradual — mirrors prior episodes that resolved either through a fresh spot bid or a deeper derivatives reset. With perp basis compressed and aggregate spot volumes thin, the path of least resistance still requires a clear external catalyst.

Aggregate spot cumulative volume delta ran negative for nine consecutive sessions through May 19, the longest sustained net-selling streak recorded in 2026 and a warning that organic demand has yet to rebuild. Hourly spot volumes are tracking roughly 40 percent below comparable 2025 windows, with the contraction spread evenly across time zones rather than concentrated in a single region. The geographic holder composition has also rotated decisively — U.S. entities that led accumulation through mid-2025 have shifted into distribution since Q4, while Asian participants have reversed course and turned into net buyers, a flow inversion not observed during prior bull market cycles.

The picture across rival flagship ether has deteriorated more sharply on a cumulative basis. Spot ether exchange-traded products logged $28.1 million in net outflows on May 20, extending their losing streak to an eighth consecutive session and bringing the nine-day tally to $504 million — an average outflow near $56 million per session and the steepest sustained reversal in ETH ETF demand since February's wave. The synchronized weakness across both flagship vehicles underscores a broader unwind of institutional crypto exposure, with allocators trimming risk into macro uncertainty surrounding the latest Nvidia earnings cycle and Walmart's downbeat consumer outlook released earlier this week.

Bitcoin trades at $77,205 with a marginal 0.30 percent loss over 24 hours, market capitalization around $1.55 trillion and volume near $14.2 billion. The RSI sits at 46.72 — neutral but tilting toward the lower band — while the MACD signal remains bearish and the broader trend is sideways. Immediate support stacks at $76,120, then $74,538 and $72,673, while resistance begins at $78,364 and extends to $80,427 and $82,800. A clean reclaim of $78,364 with options expiry approaching would open the door to a fresh $80K test, while a daily candlestick close below $76,120 would invalidate the consolidation thesis.