Deribit's Bitcoin (BTC) Max Pain Sits at $76,000, $8,000 Below Spot

Deribit's Board Leans Toward Calls

Deribit's maximum-pain level for Bitcoin (BTC) contracts expiring October 30 sits near $76,000, roughly $8,000 below the Bitcoin (BTC) price print of $84,144 recorded in New York afternoon trading on Wednesday, according to options open-interest data. Max pain marks the price at which the largest share of outstanding option contracts would expire worthless for their buyers, a positioning benchmark rather than a directional forecast. Because it aggregates open positions rather than intent, the gap between $76,000 and spot is a statement about where exposure sits, not where traders expect the asset to close the month.

The October board is nonetheless tilted toward calls: 60.88% of total open interest sits in calls, against a book of 262,739.4 BTC in calls and 168,854.8 BTC in puts, a put/call ratio near 0.64. Total options open interest stands around $36 billion, down from above $50 billion ahead of the last major expiry. Daily volume is more balanced, with calls taking 55.08% of contracts (34,514.02 BTC) and puts 44.92% (28,151.67 BTC). Volume alone cannot show whether contracts were bought or sold, since calls serve hedges and multi-leg strategies as readily as outright longs. The strikes show where conviction concentrates: Deribit's October 30 $95,000 call leads every listed contract with 23,350.8 BTC of open interest, followed by the $90,000 strike at 18,089.4 BTC and the $100,000 strike at 12,956.7 BTC, a combined 54,396.9 BTC across three lines, an upper band that echoes the $100,000 year-end target our desk profiled earlier this week. The $84,000 put expiring October 1 ranked second by daily volume, trading close to spot. Benchmarks cluster lower across venues: Binance's max pain prints near $79,000 and OKX's near $80,000, while December contracts point near $75,000 on Deribit and OKX and near $80,000 on Binance. Deribit carries roughly $10 billion in notional for each of its October and December expiries.

The call-heavy board rests on a futures market that has already shed most of its leverage. Total futures open interest stands near $53 billion, far below the peak above $90 billion reached last year. Binance holds $11.01 billion, or 20.77% of the market, and CME $8.46 billion, or 15.96%, so the two venues together carry close to 37% of all open contracts. Bybit follows at $5.22 billion, MEXC at $5.05 billion, Gate at $4.27 billion and decentralized perpetual venue Hyperliquid at $3.04 billion, ahead of OKX's $2.94 billion. Over the past 24 hours Binance's open interest rose 2.10% and CME's 1.41%, while Bybit fell 2.54% and OKX 1.89%; BingX jumped 37.34% to $918.61 million. Compress the window to four hours and Binance, CME, Bybit and OKX all contracted, a detail that tempers talk of broad expansion. Open interest counts outstanding contracts, not fresh deposits.

In a report circulated Wednesday, Bitfinex analysts argued that borrowed money and aggressive leveraged bets have left the market: futures open interest sits at its lowest level since March, implied volatility trades near a one-year low, and inflows into ETF vehicles have slowed to roughly match new issuance, a flow set by the halving schedule. With leverage flushed, they wrote, the next sustained advance must be spot-led, and they see historical support for that mix: since 2022, higher futures settlement ratios paired with compressed arbitrage spreads preceded a median 8.9% gain over 30 days. They also flagged a thickening cost-basis layer between $82,500 and $84,000, the same line analysts watched into the September monthly close, noting that a return to $85,000 would push 760,000 BTC back into profit and lift profitable supply above 75%, turning a sell zone into a hold zone. Fund-flow data adds one more angle: our desk separately tracked $3.55 billion in weekly crypto fund inflows led by Bitcoin in a recent week. Seasonality cuts both ways: September, historically one of the asset's weakest months, gained 7% this year, while the October “Uptober” streak, intact across most years since 2013, was broken in 2025. CME options positioning thinned too, with total open interest far below its end-2025 level above 70,000 contracts and the latest expiry cutting the tally from roughly 11,000 to about 6,000, though calls there now outpace puts after a long put-dominated stretch.

$84,481 Is the First Test

COINOTAG's proprietary 42-indicator composite S/R scoring engine rates the $84,481 resistance at 83/100, driven by Ichimoku Tenkan, R2, a doji print and a MACD cross, with $87,395 next at 77/100 on Donchian upper and swing-high confluence. Nearest support, $82,139, scores 73/100 on EMA 20, S2 and Fibonacci 0.214. Live spot prints $83,740, up 0.24% over 24 hours; RSI sits at 61.59, the trend reads as an uptrend and the MACD signal is bearish. Positioning leans long: funding at 0.0028%, open interest at $15.55 billion, long/short ratio 1.39, against a Fear & Greed reading of 71 (Greed). Holding $82,139 keeps the path open toward $84,481; a daily close below that support invalidates the bullish structure and exposes $77,278 (68/100). Spot now trades $7,740 above Deribit's $76,000 max pain benchmark.