Will Bitcoin Rise or Fall on Futures Expiry?

Another month is nearly over and that means another Friday for the CME bitcoin futures to expire at 4PM London time tomorrow.

Their potential effect on bitcoin’s price has been noted for long because the futures expiry tends to be preceded by a $1,000 drop in bitcoin’s spot price.

This time arguably it hasn’t been much different, except that the drop occurred unusually early:

Usually bitcoin falls on the week of futures’ expiry, but this time it fell a week ahead, perhaps because everyone has caught up to the game now.

It could have of course been China ban, because they haven’t banned bitcoin already for like years, but where price is concerned, it’s sort of like this month didn’t happen.

Bitcoin was at around $7,500 last month, and it is around the same price now, with all gains erased in between.

As such gains have been erased, you’d think it is more likely than not that there will be new gains.

Afterall, for CME shorters to profit, they presumably need to have some actual BTC first which they can sell at market order with the aim of lowering the spot price just after shorting on CME which has its price determined by the spot price.

They could also do the reverse obviously, after doing the above. They could also long on CME and now market buy all the bitcoins in a wave up, wave down, Wall Street rollercoaster.

It’s kind of what they did last month. Down in minutes to $7,000. Up in two days to $10,000. Down in a month to now $7,000 again.

So does that mean up is next? Well, who knows, but down has hopefully passed already, so, maybe.

But usually futures don’t affect price much on the day of expiry itself, so all directions are up for grab, yet which roll this time remains to be seen.