Does bitcoin rise in options-expiration week?
No — if anything it has done worse. From September 2017 to September 2026, bitcoin returned 0.19% a day less, and ether 0.37% a day less, in the week leading up to the monthly options expiry than in the same hours of other weeks. The stock-market finding that expiration weeks earn higher returns does not carry over to crypto, though the negative gap is too noisy to rely on either.
The claim
Stivers and Sun find that S&P 100 stocks with actively traded options earn higher returns in the week that ends with the monthly third-Friday expiry, relative both to stocks with less option activity and to their own other weeks. One explanation is mechanical: as near-term open interest runs off, dealers unwind their hedges. The QuantConnect Strategy Library version simply holds the index from Monday of expiration week until expiry.
What we tested
The main crypto options expire monthly on the last Friday at 08:00 UTC, with larger quarterly expiries in March, June, September and December. We held BTC and ETH spot from Monday 00:00 UTC of each expiry week to the Friday settlement, September 2017 to September 2026, and compared the result with the same hours of the week in weeks without an expiry, so that ordinary weekday patterns cancel out.
Result
The expiry week did worse, not better: −0.19% a day for bitcoin and −0.37% for ether relative to the same hours in other weeks. Bitcoin was negative in two of three eras and ether in all three, with the largest gaps after the spot ETF launch; quarterly expiry weeks, the biggest by open interest, were −0.26% and −0.64%. None of these gaps is large relative to the noise in weekly returns.
Expiry week minus the same hours of other weeks, per day
| Period | BTC | ETH |
|---|---|---|
| 2017–2019 | −0.19% | −0.22% |
| 2020–2023 | +0.01% | −0.25% |
| 2024–2026 (spot ETF era) | −0.47% | −0.69% |
| Whole period | −0.19% | −0.37% |
| Quarterly expiries only | −0.26% | −0.64% |
What it means
Whatever lifts large-cap stocks into their expiry, it is not a general law of options markets. Crypto options have different participants, and the week before expiry has not been a good week to hold bitcoin. Turning the negative sign into a short would be over-reading noise.
What would change the verdict
Options on US-listed bitcoin ETFs expire on the third Friday, like stock options, and their open interest keeps growing; that is the natural next test. A positive expiry-week premium in data after this date would reopen the question.
This note re-tests a claim made by the cited authors on our own crypto market data; the summary of their method is ours. Tested · published · last reviewed . Research, not investment advice.