Bitcoin Price Prediction: Post Deribit Settlement, BTC Survived the Selling Wave

Bitcoin price absorbed a huge body blow and bearish prediction, and stayed on its feet. BTC forced to fall under $60,000 after a 3% daily drop while Ethereum slid harder, down by more than 5% to around $1,510, and neither coin is anywhere close to where options market makers wanted them.

Friday’s Deribit expiry ranked as the quarter’s largest options event, with $10.63 billion in combined BTC and ETH notional contracts settling in a single session. Bitcoin’s slice came in at $9.06 billion across 92,154 calls and 57,652 puts, against Ethereum’s $1.57 billion.

BTC's biggest quarterly options expiry of 2026 just settled: $10.6B on Deribit, ~37% of open interest.

Max pain sat near $72K. BTC settled near $60K, so ~80% ($8.6B) expired worthless.

The max pain magnet didn't pull. Spot flow set the price, not the options book.

Our analysts flagged that puts continue to command a meaningful premium over calls across all major tenors, with Bitcoin’s 25-delta skew printing -10.7% at one day and -11.3% at seven days. That skew confirms traders were paying for downside protection heading into settlement, instead of chasing upside.

Now that the expiry has cleared and positioning resets, where will Bitcoin go next?

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Bitcoin trades at $60,000, or about 14% below the $70,000 max-pain level. However, the gap is not only about options positioning, but selling pressure also stayed firm after the recent expiry, while buyers failed to trigger a meaningful rebound.

For now, the key area sits between $58,000 and $60,000. Holding that range would keep the recent pullback under control. On the upside, Bitcoin faces resistance near $63,000 to $65,000, with a stronger ceiling around $67,000 and $68,000.

If support remains intact, price could gradually work its way back toward $65,000. That would suggest sellers are losing momentum. A stronger move higher would likely require fresh demand and improving market sentiment.

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The most likely outcome remains consolidation. Bitcoin may continue moving between $58,000 and $63,000 as traders wait for the next catalyst. Until then, price action could stay uneven and directionless.

A drop below $58,000 would weaken the near-term outlook. In that case, the next major support sits near $54,000. Meanwhile, Ethereum has fallen faster than Bitcoin recently, showing that risk appetite across crypto remains fragile. 21% below its $2,000 max pain level suggests its options positioning was even more out of whack, and it may lag any BTC recovery attempt.

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Bitcoin at $60,200 with a negative skew and macro headwinds is a tough spot for spot holders. The upside to max pain is real but not guaranteed on any near-term timeline. That gap between where BTC needs to go and where it actually trades is exactly the kind of environment where early-stage infrastructure plays start attracting rotational capital looking for asymmetric exposure.

Bitcoin Hyper ($HYPER) is positioning itself as the first Bitcoin Layer 2 with full Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) integration, targeting the core limitations that have historically kept BTC sidelined. It addresses BTC from the smart contract ecosystem: slow transactions, high fees, and limited programmability.

The presale has raised closer to $33 million at a current price of $0.0136, with staking available at high APY for early participants. The architecture pairs a decentralized canonical bridge for BTC transfers with extremely low-latency execution. The pitch is faster smart contract performance than Solana’s, while inheriting Bitcoin’s security layer.

Research Bitcoin Hyper’s presale details here.

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