It’s the last Friday of the month, with bitcoin futures on Wall Street’s CME about to expire for June.
Ending one of the most volatile month for bitcoin when the equivalent of 140,000 BTC exchanged hands in just one day this Tuesday.
Volumes have clearly risen after bitcoin touched $17,000, with that Tuesday peak translating to $3 billion in trades at the current price, presumably a new record.
A whole bunch of other futures expire today as well, including on Deribit, clearing the way for the new month.
The bitcoin futures based ETF, BITO, will therefore have to rollover, but now there’s the bitcoin short ETF as well, BITI.
This launched on Tuesday and opened downwards as bitcoin’s price rose. It seems to be attracting some interest, with this being the first futures expiry for BITI.
If BITO during expiry adds downwards pressure as they have to sell futures contracts to buy the July ones in a rollover, BITI may add upwards pressure as their selling of contracts amounts to the buying of bitcoin because it’s a short.
BITI may cancel BITO therefore, a BITO that coincides with only red since it launched in October 2021.
If some of that red is cancelled then we might get a bit of green, especially during futures expiry, or at least less red than otherwise.
