Bears have a $100M reason to keep Bitcoin price under $45K until Friday’s options expiry

cointelegraph.com:

Some analysts argue that Bitcoin (BTC) rallied too fast and too soon and the weakness that we see today is a result of that. Currently, a new Covid variant has caused the Chinese government to implement severe restrictions on Shanghai and other major cities and persistent regulatory concerns continue to weigh down on sentiment within the crypto sector.

Another concerning development is the March 31 European Parliament's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) vote to update the regulations in regards to exchange platforms’ ability to deal with noncustodial crypto wallets.

Should the regulatory project make it to the legislative phase in the upcoming months, it would place strict disclosure requirements on transactions for crypto exchanges in the European Union.

Not everything has been negative for Bitcoin because the cost of moving Bitcoin across the network has hit decade lows, according to research by Galaxy Digital. The Bitcoin median transaction fee has plummeted to 0.00001292 Bitcoin ($0.59) in 2022, the lowest in 11 years.

According to Glassnode on-chain analyst James Check, the "batching and Segwit is certainly part of the mix," because it increases the number of transactions that fit in a block.

Bitcoin's drop below $45,000 on April 6 took bulls by surprise because only 8% of the call (buy) option bets for April 8 have been placed below this price level.

Bulls might have been fooled by the recent attempt to overtake $48,000 on March 29 and this is shown in their bets for Friday's $610 million options expiry that go all the way to $65,000.

A broader view using the 0.97 call-to-put ratio shows balanced bets between the $300 million call (buy) open interest stands and the $310 million put (sell) options. Now