Bitcoin bulls set to defend $13K as $450M in BTC futures expire Friday

A total of 62K Bitcoin options are set to expire this Friday, and this is equivalent to $830 million in open interest.

Currently, there are $134 million worth of call options from $11.5K to $13.5K, stacked against $45.5 million in put options from $12.5K to $14.5K. Thus, bulls favor bears by a ratio of 3:1.

Chicago Mercantile Exchange holds a 26% market share among the October BTC options that still count.

The call options near the current market level totals $72 million, whereas the put is less than $1 million.

There's currently a $160 million imbalance favoring bulls on BTC option markets.

OKEx and Deribit options and futures are set to expire at 8:00 AM on October 30, and the CME a few hours later at 4:00 PM. Many traders believe that Bitcoin futures $5.4 billion open interest is also set to expire on Friday.

Unlike options markets, futures contracts don't devalue nearing their last trading day.

Futures margin is adjusted daily, meaning, the contract buyer gets paid by the seller when Bitcoin trades up, and the opposite happens if BTC price closes down.

At the time of writing, OKEx leads the remaining exchanges with $69 million set to expire on Friday, followed by Huobi's $23 million.

Aside from the $160 million options expiry imbalance, futures contract buyers are holding a comfortable position.