Published
Max pain is the strike where option sellers collectively owe the least if price settled there right now -- the point where total payout to open call and put holders is minimized. Deribit is the only venue with a real BTC/ETH options market, and I pulled its order book summary this morning for the nearest expiry on each coin. Both expire today, 7 October. BTC's spot was $85,525.01 against a max pain strike of $86,000 -- a gap of $474.99, or 0.56%. ETH's spot was $2,696.55 against a $2,700 strike -- $3.45 away, or 0.13%. Neither coin needs to move more than half a percent to land exactly on the number option sellers would have picked for them.
The numbers, side by side
| Coin | Spot | Max pain strike | Distance | IV | Put/Call OI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BTC | $85,525.01 | $86,000 | 0.56% | 23.85% | 0.560 |
| ETH | $2,696.55 | $2,700 | 0.13% | 25.14% | 0.557 |
Put/Call OI is put open interest divided by call open interest, so a reading under 1 means calls dominate. Both coins sit at roughly 0.56 -- call open interest is about 1.8x put open interest on each. That's a market positioned for upside, landing on an expiry strike that happens to sit barely above where spot already is. The two facts are separate (one is where the magnet is, the other is which side has more size on), but they're consistent with the same grind-up setup: dealers short a lot of calls near $86,000 and $2,700, and spot drifted up to meet them.
Why price gravitates toward the strike at all
This isn't magic and it isn't guaranteed. Market makers who sold those calls and puts hedge their exposure by trading the underlying, and that hedging flow concentrates around the strikes carrying the most open interest -- which, by definition, cluster near max pain. As expiry gets closer, gamma near the money gets larger, so the same size move in the underlying forces a bigger hedging adjustment. The net effect on a day like today, with open interest this concentrated and spot already this close, is that dealer hedging can act like a shock absorber: it dampens moves away from the strike more than it would on a random Tuesday. Real order flow can blow through that any time -- a big directional trade, a macro print, a liquidation cascade on the perp side doesn't care what the options book wants. But absent a strong outside push, the path of least resistance into expiry tends to be toward the strike, not away from it.
Why this matters if you don't trade options at all
This is a RektCalc audience of mostly perp and leverage traders, not options sellers, and the relevant point isn't "trade the pin." It's that pin risk changes the character of price action on expiry day itself. A market getting held near a strike by dealer hedging can look unusually calm -- tight range, muted realized volatility -- right up until the options clear and that hedging pressure disappears. The release afterward isn't guaranteed either, but it's the reason some of the sharpest short-term moves on majors land in the hours just after a large expiry, not during it. If you're sized for max leverage based on how quiet today's price action looks going into the close, you're measuring a market that has a known reason to be artificially quiet. Check what happens to that position on our liquidation calculator under a move that's double or triple today's realized range, not today's range itself.
What I'm watching next
I'll pull this same comparison after today's expiry clears to see whether either coin actually moved toward its strike into the close, or whether real flow overrode it the way it often does. Both the max pain calculator and the gamma exposure calculator update from the same live feed, so the next snapshot is already there whenever you check -- no need to wait for a write-up.