Bitcoin Nears $70K as $2.2 Billion Options Expiry Looms, Stirring Market

Bitcoin's price retreated to around $70,000 this Friday, following a five-day surge exceeding 15% that triggered a profit-taking wave. The market's current focus is on the $2.22 billion BTC options contracts expiring at 8:00 AM UTC on the Deribit platform, involving open interest of over 31,500 Bitcoins. As of press time, the put/call ratio stands high at 1.72, indicating a bearish sentiment in the market. The Maximum Pain price is locked at $69,000, only about $1,400 below the current spot price. This price level often exerts a gravitational pull on the spot price around options expiry, increasing the risk of a short-term pullback to this support level for Bitcoin.

Bitcoin expiring options | Source: Deribit Since early February, Bitcoin has failed to firmly establish itself above $70,000 six times. Another failure could further dampen short-term bullish confidence, triggering a cascading sell-off. However, from a technical perspective, there are no clear signs of a crash in the short term. In the Bitcoin/USDT daily chart, the MACD indicator continues to rise, showing increasing buying power, while the Relative Strength Index (RSI) also shows a bullish divergence from the price movement, suggesting that potential rebound momentum is still accumulating. The bulls are targeting $72,000, and a successful breakout could end the recent decline. Conversely, if the $70,000 support is breached, the technical outlook may accelerate a decline to $69,000, further testing the key psychological level of $60,000—the overall trend is still constrained by a typical bearish flag pattern, a classic bearish continuation pattern in technical analysis.

Bitcoin/USDT 24-hour price chart — March 6 | Source: crypto.news