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Traders don’t like Bitcoin’s chances of reclaiming the all-time high price of $124,000 this week.
That’s according to data from Deribit, an options-trading platform, where a big number of puts are in the $108,000 to $112,000 range. About 17% of puts worth nearly $1 billion are within this range.
In total, traders have poured over $5 billion into puts for the August 29 expiry.
Puts are bearish bets traders often use to hedge against a potential price slump. Buying a put at this range gives traders the option, but not the obligation, to sell the underlying asset at that price, even if the price drops lower.
Deribit described the Friday expiry as “of the heaviest of 2025 so far” which “may help set the market tone for September.”
Punters on Polymarket don’t like the top cryptocurrency’s chances either. A $230,000 bet on the gambling platform gives Bitcoin a 46% chance of trading below $110,000 on Friday. Traders also put a 22% chance that Bitcoin would trade between $110,000 and $112,000.
The expiry comes as Bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded over $1 billion in outflows last week, according to crypto ETF firm CoinShares.
To be sure, not all traders are as pessimistic. The biggest call position on Friday is at $120,000.
A call is a bullish bet that allows the trader to buy an asset at a particular price. If, for instance, Bitcoin would trade above $120,000, then traders with a call can buy coins at a discount and then sell them at a profit.
The news comes days after Fed Chair Jerome Powell signalled that the central bank may cut interest rates at its September meeting.
Low interest rates usually incentivise traders to bet on risk-on assets like crypto.
Yet not, everyone is convinced.
The remarks “could be seen as contradictory and may leave markets debating his true intentions,” Katalin Tischhauser, Head of Research at Sygnum Bank, said in a statement shared with DL News.
Markets are still pricing an 84% chance of a September cut, according to the CME FedWatch tool. That’s down from two weeks ago when chances were over 90%.
Bitcoin is down 1.5% over the past 24 hours to trade at $109,666.
Ethereum is up 4.2% to trade at $4,416.
