Nearly $18 billion worth of Bitcoin and Ethereum options are expiring today, making this one of the largest quarterly settlements of the year. While an options expiry does not automatically mean that Bitcoin or Ethereum will rise or fall, large settlements can temporarily change the market's liquidity and hedging dynamics. Understanding how options work helps explain why crypto markets can experience unusual price action and volatility around major expiry dates.What are options?Options are derivatives that give traders the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an asset at a predetermined price before or at expiration. A call option gives the buyer the right to buy the underlying asset at a specific strike price, while a put option gives the buyer the right to sell it.For example, suppose Bitcoin is trading at $85,000 and a trader owns a $90,000 call option. If Bitcoin rises above $90,000, the option becomes increasingly valuable. If Bitcoin remains below $90,000 at expiration, the option can expire worthless. The opposite applies to put options. Traders use these instruments to speculate on price direction, hedge existing positions or trade volatility without directly buying or selling Bitcoin or Ethereum.How they can impact the market?Market makers and dealers frequently take the other side of options trades. To manage their exposure, they can hedge their positions using the underlying asset or futures. This creates a direct connection between the options market and spot Bitcoin.For example, if dealers are short a large amount of call options and Bitcoin starts moving higher, their exposure can become increasingly sensitive to further gains. Dealers may then need to buy Bitcoin to remain hedged. This can create a feedback loop in which Bitcoin rises, dealer hedging generates additional buying, and that buying pushes Bitcoin higher, creating the need for further hedging.This is one reason options positioning can amplify price movements around certain strike prices. The effect is sometimes described through the concept of gamma, which measures how quickly an option's sensitivity to the underlying asset changes as the price moves.Once the options expire, those positions cease to exist. The associated hedges can then be reduced, closed or rolled into later-dated contracts. This can change the flow of buying and selling in the underlying market.Why today's expiry is significant?Today's expiry is particularly significant because around $15.9 billion of Bitcoin options and $2.1 billion of Ethereum options are scheduled to expire. The Bitcoin expiry alone represents roughly 37% of Deribit's outstanding Bitcoin open interest.The September Bitcoin options book is also call-heavy, with a put/call open-interest ratio of 0.69. A large portion of the call positioning is concentrated around the $85,000, $90,000, $95,000 and $100,000 strikes. With Bitcoin trading around the mid-$80,000s, these positions are becoming particularly relevant.Before expiry, this positioning can influence the market through dealer hedging. If dealers need to buy or sell the underlying asset as Bitcoin moves through important strike prices, those flows can reinforce the existing price move or temporarily keep the market around certain levels.The effect can also extend beyond Bitcoin. Bitcoin remains the largest and most liquid cryptocurrency, so changes in BTC volatility and direction can quickly influence broader crypto-market sentiment. Ethereum can also experience its own options-related flows, while smaller cryptocurrencies can react to changes in overall risk appetite.This is particularly important when the options market is heavily positioned in one direction. A call-heavy book can contribute to upside momentum through dealer hedging while prices are rising. Once those calls expire that mechanical source of buying can disappear. The same principle works in reverse when a market is heavily positioned through puts. This article was written by Giuseppe Dellamotta at investinglive.com.

Last week, the US Senate held a procedural vote on the CLARITY Act, which unsurprisingly failed to pass, as Republicans hold 53 seats while 60 votes were needed, and Democrats weren’t exactly supportive of the bill or the crypto sector as a whole. Hence, the market initially dipped, but it didn’t last long since this was already priced in. For the same reason, crypto barely reacted to the Fed raising rates. Still, that doesn’t explain where the optimism came from, and there are a few theories.The first is that part of the boost may have come from the US House Financial Services Committee's approval of a bill to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve. It can now go to a vote in the full House, and if it passes, it would still need to clear the Senate and get the president’s signature. If passed, the Bitcoin in the reserve couldn’t be sold, exchanged, or pledged for 20 years.The thing is, according to Arkham, the government currently holds around 324,500 BTC worth almost $29 billion, which sounds like a lot but is still small compared with Bitcoin’s $1.72 trillion market cap. And importantly, there’s still no talk of buying more Bitcoin for the reserve. Second, some point to Coinbase’s CEO saying, “We can’t wait for senators forever. We don’t need the CLARITY Act anymore. We’ll turn to regulators. The SEC and CFTC will develop clear rules.”Although that could have given the market a boost, it’s still hard to see how they could bypass Congress and go straight to the SEC and CFTC for clear rules. A bigger factor may have been short sellers, with $648 million in positions liquidated in just 24 hours. As for what to expect next, the breakeven point for US spot Bitcoin ETFs is around $85,638–86,000, so holding above $86,000 is key to maintaining momentum. The only problem is that there aren’t many fundamentals for that.On the regulatory side, there’s not much to be optimistic about either. The Fed has already raised rates and could do it again if inflation stays high. The bigger issue is that if Democrats win the midterms, pro-crypto legislation could become harder to pass, and the president could also face impeachment.So it’s still too early to talk about Bitcoin price getting back above $100,000, but if risk-on returns, for example after the Iran conflict ends, it could benefit.  This article was written by IL Contributors at investinglive.com.