Key Takeaways:
CME bitcoin options open interest fell from $290M in November to under $40M by June 2026.Deribit max pain climbs to $75,000 for September and December 2026 contract expirations.Binance leads futures open interest at 131.97K BTC, an 18.22% share, per Coinglass data.When CME’s options book is broken down by expiration, most contracts cluster in the one to two-month window. Longer dated positions, those expiring four months or more out, have thinned considerably since the fall, leaving traders concentrated in near term bets rather than spreading risk further into 2026 and beyond.
Futures Open Interest Tells a Different StoryMax pain, the strike price where the largest number of options contracts expire worthless, varies by venue but follows a similar arc. On Deribit, near term max pain sits around $63,000 for this week’s expiry, climbing toward $75,000 for contracts expiring in September and December 2026 before easing toward $72,000 by March 2027.
