Bitcoin price absorbed a huge body blow and bearish prediction, and stayed on its feet. BTC forced to fall under $60,000 after a 3% daily drop while Ethereum slid harder, down by more than 5% to around $1,510, and neither coin is anywhere close to where options market makers wanted them.
Friday’s Deribit expiry ranked as the quarter’s largest options event, with $10.63 billion in combined BTC and ETH notional contracts settling in a single session. Bitcoin’s slice came in at $9.06 billion across 92,154 calls and 57,652 puts, against Ethereum’s $1.57 billion.
Our analysts flagged that puts continue to command a meaningful premium over calls across all major tenors, with Bitcoin’s 25-delta skew printing -10.7% at one day and -11.3% at seven days. That skew confirms traders were paying for downside protection heading into settlement, instead of chasing upside.
Bitcoin Price Prediction: $70,000?
Bitcoin trades at $60,000, or about 14% below the $70,000 max-pain level. However, the gap is not only about options positioning, but selling pressure also stayed firm after the recent expiry, while buyers failed to trigger a meaningful rebound.
For now, the key area sits between $58,000 and $60,000. Holding that range would keep the recent pullback under control. On the upside, Bitcoin faces resistance near $63,000 to $65,000, with a stronger ceiling around $67,000 and $68,000.
If support remains intact, price could gradually work its way back toward $65,000. That would suggest sellers are losing momentum. A stronger move higher would likely require fresh demand and improving market sentiment. The most likely outcome remains consolidation. Bitcoin may continue moving between $58,000 and $63,000 as traders wait for the next catalyst. Until then, price action could stay uneven and directionless.
A drop below $58,000 would weaken the near-term outlook. In that case, the next major support sits near $54,000. Meanwhile, Ethereum has fallen faster than Bitcoin recently, showing that risk appetite across crypto remains fragile. 21% below its $2,000 max pain level suggests its options positioning was even more out of whack, and it may lag any BTC recovery attempt.
Bitcoin Hyper Draws Early-Stage Interest as BTC Tests Critical Support
Bitcoin at $60,200 with a negative skew and macro headwinds is a tough spot for spot holders. The upside to max pain is real but not guaranteed on any near-term timeline. That gap between where BTC needs to go and where it actually trades is exactly the kind of environment where early-stage infrastructure plays start attracting rotational capital looking for asymmetric exposure.
Bitcoin Hyper ($HYPER) is positioning itself as the first Bitcoin Layer 2 with full Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) integration, targeting the core limitations that have historically kept BTC sidelined. It addresses BTC from the smart contract ecosystem: slow transactions, high fees, and limited programmability.
