Deribit’s Record Options Expiry Reset the Year-End Crypto Market

Deribit completed the largest cryptocurrency options expiry then on record on December 26, 2025, clearing a year-end concentration of bitcoin and ether contracts from its books at the exchange’s 08:00 UTC settlement. The event was consequential less because it dictated an immediate direction for spot prices than because it showed how much digital-asset risk had accumulated in options tied to a single quarterly and annual deadline.

Deribit flagged the date from its official account at 07:21 UTC, calling it the largest options-expiry day of the year. A same-day market report subsequently described the expiry as the largest in the venue’s history. That distinction should be read with care: “notional value” measured the face value of open contracts using prevailing asset prices. It was not the amount of cash paid at settlement, a realized loss, or fresh trading volume.

The size depended on the measurement moment

CoinDesk’s December 22 snapshot, based on Deribit data, placed the expiring open interest at $23.6 billion in bitcoin options and $3.8 billion in ether options, or approximately $27.4 billion combined. Each listed contract represented one BTC or one ETH. The publication said the batch exceeded half of Deribit’s total options open interest.

A separate December 22 report quoted Deribit Chief Commercial Officer Jean-David Pequignot putting the scheduled expiry at $28.5 billion. After settlement, a December 26 report counted 267,000 BTC options with $23.6 billion of notional value and 1.28 million ETH options with $3.71 billion, approximately $27.31 billion combined.

Those totals are not necessarily contradictory. Open interest can change as traders close or roll positions, while dollar notional changes with bitcoin and ether prices. The defensible range for the surviving contemporaneous record is therefore roughly $27 billion to $28.5 billion, depending on the observation time and methodology. No reviewed source supplied an immutable contract-by-contract end-of-day file sufficient to reconstruct one exact consolidated total.

A reset, not a directional verdict

The December 22 CoinDesk snapshot reported a put-call ratio of 0.38, meaning calls numerically exceeded puts by almost three to one. Much of the call interest sat at strike prices from $100,000 to $116,000, while the most prominent downside position was the $85,000 put. Sidrah Fariq, Deribit’s global head of retail sales and business development, characterized that structure as bullish positioning but also noted that some $70,000-to-$85,000 puts were being moved into January expiries.

That positioning did not prove that traders collectively expected bitcoin to rise. A call can be bought or sold, combined into a spread, or used to hedge another exposure. Open-interest counts show contracts outstanding, not the identity or net economic risk of every holder.

The much-discussed “max pain” estimate carried a similar limitation. CoinDesk placed it near $96,000 in its December 22 snapshot, while the same-day December 26 report put it at $95,000. The metric estimates the settlement level at which aggregate option-holder payouts would be minimized under simplifying assumptions. It was not an exchange target, a forecast, or evidence of manipulation.

Why December 26 mattered

Bitcoin was trading around $87,200 when The Block published its December 26 market report at 12:40 p.m. Eastern, based on The Block/TradingView price data. That observation came hours after Deribit’s 08:00 UTC expiry and is not a universal daily close: bitcoin trades continuously across venues.

The price’s distance below the heavily populated call strikes meant many bullish contracts could finish without value, while the expiration removed a large block of short-dated hedging exposure. The event therefore marked a structural reset in derivatives positioning, not a transfer of $27 billion in spot bitcoin or ether and not a guaranteed volatility shock.

For the December 26 record, the central conclusion is narrow. Crypto options had become large enough that a single venue’s year-end maturity exceeded half of its outstanding options book and demanded market-wide attention. What came after settlement required new data; the expiry alone could not establish the next direction for either asset.