Bitcoin week ahead: US CPI 10 Nov, $2.5B options expiry

Last week the labour market had its say. This week prices do, twice.

Bitcoin traded near $75,930 on Kraken at 14:50 UTC (15:50 CET) on Sunday, up 0.24% from the UTC-day open of $75,750.2. It is down about 3% from Monday’s open of $78,239.2, after a week that ran from a Wednesday high of $81,179.6 to a Friday low of $74,790.0.

Ether was near $2,238, up 0.08% on the UTC day, and XRP near $1.163. Solana slipped 0.22% to about $89.48.

Fund flows leaned the same way. US spot bitcoin funds lost a net $1.28 billion over the week to 6 Nov, according to our ETF Desk.

Derivatives are calm. Deribit’s volatility index, DVOL, read 40.4, which implies a one-standard-deviation move of about 2.1% a day. Bitcoin perpetual open interest on Deribit was about $697 million, and funding was 0.0012% per eight hours.

Put simply, funding is the fee holders of perpetual futures pay each other to keep the contract near spot, and at that level nobody is paying up to hold a bet in either direction.

The bitcoin week ahead, day by day (UTC / CET)

US data land at 13:30 UTC, which is 14:30 in Paris, Zurich or Berlin. Fed times below are converted from Eastern Time.

Mon 9 Nov: Binance co-CEOs Richard Teng and Yi He and its chief security officer, Jimmy Su, hold a fireside chat on X Spaces at 12:00 UTC (13:00 CET), per Binance. Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman joins a discussion on community banking at 13:40 UTC (14:40 CET), per the Fed’s calendar. The Federal Register is due to publish FinCEN and the Fed’s withdrawal of the $250 Travel Rule proposal; see our report.
Tue 10 Nov: Fed Governor Christopher Waller speaks on the economic outlook at the Bank of England and its Watchers Conference in London at 09:00 UTC (10:00 CET). Canaan, which makes bitcoin-mining machines, reports third-quarter results before the US open and holds its call at 13:00 UTC (14:00 CET), per the company. The US consumer price index for October follows at 13:30 UTC (14:30 CET), per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bowman speaks on the outlook twice later in the day, at 20:30 UTC (21:30 CET) and 23:30 UTC (00:30 CET).
Wed 11 Nov: Veterans Day, a US federal holiday. The Fed moves its daily and weekly statistical releases to Thursday.
Thu 12 Nov: the UK’s first estimate of third-quarter GDP comes at 07:00 UTC (08:00 CET), per the Office for National Statistics. Fed Governor Michael Barr speaks on artificial intelligence and inequality at 15:00 UTC (16:00 CET).
Fri 13 Nov: Deribit’s weekly options expire at 08:00 UTC (09:00 CET). US producer prices for October follow at 13:30 UTC (14:30 CET). Bowman speaks on supervision at 15:50 UTC (16:50 CET), and Vice Chair Philip Jefferson on productivity at 00:00 UTC on Saturday (01:00 CET), which is 7 p.m. in Washington on Friday.

There is no Fed rate meeting this week. We are not quoting consensus forecasts for the two inflation reports, because published ones differ.

Why do rate expectations reach crypto at all? Our explainer on how bond yields affect bitcoin covers it.

Friday’s expiry, strike by strike

Of the 33,426 BTC expiring on Friday, 19,844 are calls and 13,582 are puts, a put-to-call ratio of 0.68. At Deribit’s index price of $75,927 at 14:48 UTC, that is about $2.5 billion by our arithmetic, one contract being 1 BTC. Ether options expiring the same morning add 126,566 ETH, about $283 million.

A put pays if bitcoin finishes below its strike, the price written into the contract. A call pays if it finishes above. Open interest is the number of contracts still outstanding.

Friday’s book is about 10% of the 338,725 BTC of bitcoin options open on Deribit, and about a quarter larger than the 26,966 BTC that expired last Friday, measured on the Sunday before.

The calls sit well above the market. Calls at $80,000 or higher hold 17,883 BTC, 90% of all calls in this expiry.

The two biggest strikes are $81,000, with 8,160 BTC of calls, and $84,000, with 5,277 BTC. They are 6.7% and 10.6% above Sunday’s index price.

The puts are closer. The largest stack is $74,000, with 4,192 BTC, 2.5% below the index, followed by $72,000 (2,177 BTC) and $68,000 (1,991 BTC). Puts at $74,000 or lower hold 10,496 BTC, 77% of the puts.

Open interest counts contracts, not intent. A put at $74,000 could be a hedge on coins already held, one leg of a spread or an outright bet, and the data does not say which. It shows where payouts would begin.

Our max-pain strike for Friday is $78,000, about 2.7% above Sunday’s index price. Max pain is the strike at which option holders as a group would collect the least if every contract were held to expiry. We calculate it from Deribit’s open interest.

It is a convention, not a magnet.

The levels to watch are $74,790, Friday’s low, and $81,179.6, Wednesday’s high. A sustained break below the first would put the $74,000 and $72,000 put stacks in play. Above, the line that matters for our market mood is still $84,250, the 12 Oct high, which bitcoin has not traded above since 22 Oct.

A different reading

The book near spot leans to protection. Between $74,000 and $78,000, puts hold 6,608 BTC and calls 1,506, so the hedges are crowded around the market while the calls wait several thousand dollars higher.

That does not make a drop more likely. Heavy put buying can simply mean holders are insured, and insured holders tend to sell less in a hurry.

The bigger dates come later. Deribit’s 27 Nov monthly expiry already holds 72,524 BTC, more than twice Friday’s, and 25 Dec holds 140,372 BTC.

Not on the calendar

Binance’s remaining networks: Binance re-enabled HYPE and APT withdrawals at 08:52 UTC on Sunday, per its latest update, and said further assets and networks will follow in phases, with no times given; see Binance’s phased restart.
The Tornado-funded wallet on Hyperliquid: at 14:47 UTC its roughly $20 million long-bitcoin and $20 million short-ether positions were unchanged, Hyperliquid’s public data showed; see our report.

Just beyond the week

Tue 17 Nov: the Bank of Russia’s rules letting non-qualified investors buy bitcoin, ether and USDT take effect; see our report.
Wed 18 Nov: minutes of the Fed’s 27-28 Oct meeting, at 19:00 UTC (20:00 CET).

Mark Tuesday 14:30 CET: the inflation print comes before the US open, and the options market has priced only a modest daily move.

As of 14:50 UTC (15:50 CET), bitcoin was trading near $75,930 on Kraken.

Related: Last week’s calendar

This article is for information only and is not investment advice.