Powell’s speech slashed Bitcoin’s price; Will Options expiry do the same?

Bitcoin‘s price was once again consolidating yesterday as many of the market’s traders awaited the Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s speech. The market anticipated the Fed to raise the inflation rate, but Powell introduced new plans to target inflation averaging at 2% over time. However, while the Fed Reserve chair shared his insights, Bitcoin’s spot market had already begun its descent on the back of expectations around a higher inflation rate.

Bitcoin’s price continued to fall even after Powell’s address, falling to a low of $11,122 on the charts. In fact, according to data provider Skew, around $10 million longs were liquidated within a single hour on BitMEX. While the falling price may have acted as a selling price for many traders, it also posed as a good buying opportunity for BTC Options traders.

Deribit, one of the market’s most prominent Options exchanges, noted that even before Powell had begun his speech, the exchange was noting buyers in the market. By the time Powell concluded his speech, the BTC Options market was hosting a set of fresh buyers.

Source: BTC/USD on TradingView

At the time of writing, the Relative Strength Index was pretty close to the overbought zone, an observation that implied that the crypto-asset was possibly overbought and a sell-off would bring the selling and buying pressures to equilibrium. However, the BTC market had opened up to a great deal of volatility as well, with the Bollinger Bands diverging on the charts and the price trend, once again, moving upwards.

The BTC Options contracts expiring on 28 August rose to 67k, while the remaining flow of funds was mainly focused on contracts expiring on 4 September and 11 September with 11k to 10k Puts, as noted by Deribit Insights. As per Deribit, this “is somewhat against what was seen recently, suggesting some nervousness <11.3k with less aggressive option offers to placate demand.”

The BTC 1m implied volatility rose from 52% to 54% and eventually, was found sitting at 57%. Generally, the IV subsides post-event, but greater demand has kept the IV afloat. The expiration of 67k BTC Options open interest will determine the next move for BTC in the market since the sentiment, at the time of writing, remained ‘Greedy,’ just like yesterday.