The Federal Reserve decides today, and on Friday 30 October the largest bitcoin options venue, Deribit, settles its monthly contracts. CryptoTicker put the notional at $11.1 billion, or 34.6% of open Deribit bitcoin options, with a put/call ratio of 0.56 and “max pain” at $78,000, about 3.4% below the $80,783 spot price at the time of writing (CryptoTicker, 24 October). Decrypt, as cited by PrimeXBT on 23 October, put the same expiry at $11.69 billion. Headlines treat such Fridays as a volatility event. Does the price record agree?
Informational only. This is a description of historical data, not a forecast and not investment advice.
The test, in one paragraph
We took Yahoo Finance’s daily BTC-USD closes (UTC day) from 17 September 2014 to 26 October 2026 and defined an “expiry day” as the last Friday of each calendar month, the day Deribit’s monthly contracts expire at 08:00 UTC. From January 2018 to September 2026 that gives 105 expiry days among 3,221 daily returns. For each we measured the close-to-close return on the day, the day before and the day after, and the seven days either side, and compared them with all other days. To judge whether any difference could be chance, we drew 20,000 random sets of the same number of ordinary days and counted how often their average absolute move was lower than the expiry days’. Because the answer depends on the era, we show three start years: 2018, 2020 and 2022. Those cut-offs are our choice and are disclosed as such.
Result 1: expiry days are not wilder than other days
| Sample (start year) | Expiry days | Mean return (standard error) | Median | Up days | Mean absolute move, expiry days | Mean absolute move, all days | Share of days with a move of 3% or more (expiry / all) | Rank vs random day sets |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 105 | +0.11% (0.33) | −0.25% | 47 of 105 | 2.26% | 2.20% | 25.7% / 24.1% | 62nd percentile |
| 2020 | 81 | −0.38% (0.31) | −0.44% | 32 of 81 | 2.00% | 2.07% | 22.2% / 22.1% | 42nd percentile |
| 2022 | 57 | −0.55% (0.25) | −0.44% | 21 of 57 | 1.44% | 1.80% | 14.0% / 17.9% | 7th percentile |
Read the last column as follows: in the 2018 sample, 62% of random sets of ordinary days had a smaller average move than the expiry days did, so the expiry days sit in the middle of the pack. In the 2022 sample, only 7% of random sets were quieter than the expiry days, which means expiry days were calmer than usual. Measured by the share of days with a move of 3% or more, the 2022 expiry days had 8 such days out of 57 (14.0%) against 17.9% for all days. The full-sample figure of 25.7% against 24.1% is a difference of under two percentage points on 105 observations; it is noise.
Chart: bitcoin over one month, TradingView widget (live data).
Result 2: no reliable direction, and a weak hint of a negative bias since 2022
Across the whole sample, the average expiry-day return of +0.11% is indistinguishable from the +0.11% average of all days. Starting in 2022 the picture tilts: expiry days averaged −0.55% with a standard error of 0.25, against +0.07% for all days in that period, and only 21 of 57 closed higher. That is about two standard errors from zero, which is suggestive but not conclusive; we looked at three start years and several measures, so some apparent significance is expected by chance. The day before and the day after show nothing consistent.
| Window (n = 105 from 2018 / 57 from 2022) | Mean return from 2018 (SE) | Mean return from 2022 (SE) |
|---|---|---|
| Thursday before expiry | −0.28% (0.31) | +0.15% (0.26) |
| Expiry Friday | +0.11% (0.33) | −0.55% (0.25) |
| Saturday after expiry | +0.25% (0.19) | 0.00% (0.16) |
| Seven days after expiry | +1.03% (0.71) | +0.20% (0.80) |
| All seven-day windows (overlapping) | +0.75% (0.16) | +0.48% (0.17) |
The Saturday after expiry is typically quiet: the average absolute move was 1.24% from 2018 and only 0.69% from 2022, which fits the thin weekend liquidity bitcoin usually sees. In the seven days after expiry the average gain was larger than in an average week in 2018–2026 on paper (+1.03% against +0.75%), but the standard error on the expiry figure is 0.71 points, so it cannot be told apart from an ordinary week.
Video: a 2021 explainer from the Coinsider channel, included as dated background on the same question. Opinion from a different market era, not our analysis.
Quarterly expiries are not special either
Four expiries a year, in March, June, September and December, are typically the largest because they also settle the quarterly contracts. Since 2018 the 35 quarterly expiry days had an average absolute move of 2.36% against 2.22% for the 70 other monthly expiries, a gap that is within noise. Since 2022 the order flips: 19 quarterly days averaged 1.07% and 38 monthly days 1.63%.
The last twelve expiries: nine closed lower
The recent run is less neutral than the long record. Of the last 12 expiry days (October 2025 to September 2026), nine closed lower, for an average of −1.06% (standard error 0.44). Over the same stretch the 40 ordinary Fridays averaged +0.54% (SE 0.50) and all days −0.07% (SE 0.12). The sample is small, and bitcoin fell and then recovered sharply inside this window, so we treat it as a pattern to watch rather than a rule.
| Expiry Friday | Expiry-day return | Next-day (Saturday) return | Coinbase-equivalent close (Yahoo) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 31 Oct 2025 | +1.15% | +0.46% | $109,556 |
| 28 Nov 2025 | −0.40% | −0.07% | $90,919 |
| 26 Dec 2025 | +0.08% | +0.57% | $87,301 |
| 30 Jan 2026 | −0.51% | −6.55% | $84,129 |
| 27 Feb 2026 | −2.33% | +1.69% | $65,882 |
| 27 Mar 2026 | −3.57% | −0.03% | $66,338 |
| 24 Apr 2026 | −1.04% | +0.20% | $77,455 |
| 29 May 2026 | −0.22% | +0.52% | $73,373 |
| 26 Jun 2026 | +0.49% | −0.13% | $60,016 |
| 31 Jul 2026 | −2.95% | −0.08% | $62,814 |
| 28 Aug 2026 | −3.02% | +0.53% | $77,830 |
| 25 Sep 2026 | −0.41% | +0.44% | $84,035 |
Closes are Yahoo Finance BTC-USD daily closes (UTC), which can differ by small amounts from Coinbase candles. The one large post-expiry move, −6.55% on Saturday 31 January 2026, came the day after a quiet expiry, which is why we do not attribute it to the contracts.
What this means for Friday 30 October
The base rate, not a forecast: on an average expiry day since 2022 bitcoin moved 1.44% in either direction, since 2018 2.26%. At $80,783 that is a typical swing of roughly $1,160 to $1,830. A move of 3% or more, about $2,420, happened on between 14% and 26% of expiry days depending on the era, which is close to what happens on any other day. The history gives no basis for a directional call, and it does not tell us whether the price gravitates toward the “max pain” strike: we do not have a historical series of max-pain levels, so we cannot test that claim and do not endorse it. CryptoTicker itself notes that max pain describes positioning, not direction, and that its own related headlines cite different Friday totals ($11.1 billion, $12.2 billion and others), which are not reconciled. Our field guide to reading an expiry headline shows how to separate those numbers.
The more useful context this week is the calendar around the expiry rather than the expiry itself: the Fed decision today, PCE inflation and the Strategy results on Thursday, and the 3 November US midterms. Our 26 October analysis found the 30-day trading range had compressed to about 10%, tighter than 97% of days since 2016, a state that has often been followed by larger moves; an expiry is one of several possible triggers, not an obvious one.
Video: a French-language preview of the Fed decision posted on 26 October. Opinion, not our analysis.
Limits of this study
- Calendar rule, not Deribit’s list. We used the last Friday of the month; Deribit’s monthly expiry is that day at 08:00 UTC, but we did not check Deribit’s historical contract calendar, and Deribit also lists daily and weekly expiries, which we did not test.
- Daily data. A close-to-close daily return includes the 16 hours after the 08:00 UTC settlement, so any effect concentrated before settlement is diluted.
- Overlapping windows. The seven-day comparisons overlap, so their standard errors are understated.
- Post hoc cut-offs and many looks. The start years and measures were chosen by us; the 2022 result in particular should be read with that in mind.
- Data source. Yahoo Finance’s BTC-USD series; the latest observation was the 26 October close because the 27 October row was not complete at pull time.
Method: bitcoin prices are Coinbase Exchange data pulled by Bitcoin Mastery at about 07:05 UTC on Wednesday 28 October 2026. Third-party figures are attributed to their source and date. The study used Yahoo Finance BTC-USD daily closes from 17 September 2014 through 26 October 2026; all calculations are by Bitcoin Mastery. Expiry totals and max-pain levels are from CryptoTicker (24 October) and Decrypt via PrimeXBT (23 October).
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are volatile and you can lose some or all of the money you put in. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold bitcoin, any exchange-traded fund, any listed security or any other asset, and the technical levels, probabilities and scenarios discussed are descriptions of published data, not forecasts. Do your own research and consult a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions.