Ether drops below $2,200 as $748M in ETH options expire on Deribit
Ether fell below $2,200 on Oct. 30 as about $748M in ETH options expired on Deribit with max pain at $2,400, after the Binance hack fueled heavy liquidations.
ETHEREUMPRICE ANALYSISNEWS
Daniel Hartley
10/30/20261 min read
Ether fell below $2,200 on Friday, Oct. 30, touching an overnight low near $2,170 as a monthly options expiry worth about $748 million settled on Deribit, according to CryptoTicker. Coin Bureau put the decline at nearly 7% over 24 hours.
Ethereum accounted for about $358 million of the roughly $1.5 billion in leveraged liquidations across crypto markets over the past day, CoinDesk data cited by CoinCentral show. The sell-off followed the Binance hack, which pushed the Crypto Fear and Greed Index down from 51 to 30.
Friday's expiry covered 333,649 ETH contracts, about 20.3% of the 1,645,955 contracts in open interest, and settled at 08:00 UTC. The max pain level stood at $2,400, roughly 6.6% above spot. In-the-money puts outnumbered calls by 68,199 to 8,611, and about 77% of all contracts were set to expire worthless. CryptoTicker argued that the expiry does not set the direction of the price but helps explain why buyers offered so little resistance.
Chart and on-chain picture
ETH has lost about 16.4% since Oct. 1. On the daily chart it broke below an ascending trendline drawn from June's rebound off roughly $1,500, after failing several times to reclaim the $2,400 to $2,450 zone, CoinCentral noted. The daily RSI reading of 29.81 sits just inside oversold territory. The outlet sees support at $2,175, $2,100 and $2,000, with resistance at $2,300 to $2,350.
DefiLlama data show total value locked in Ethereum DeFi fell 6.59% to about $43.26 billion, although network activity held up with around 1.76 million daily transactions and $7.29 billion in 24-hour DEX volume.
Standard Chartered's Geoffrey Kendrick said prices could stay under pressure until more is known about the breach and the frozen funds. The next large ether expiry falls on Nov. 27, with about 180,986 contracts.
Source: CryptoTicker, CoinCentral, CoinDesk, DefiLlama