• The Bitcoin spot price is expected to react Friday to the expiration of the futures contracts.
• Bitcoin futures worth around $ 1 billion are expected to close on Friday.
• The options traders have a tendency to pin the spot price for them to manage the risk of losses.

Bitcoin bulls have been beaten considerably in the past 24 hours by widespread selling pressure in the cryptocurrency market. Earlier this week, the cryptocurrency grandpa embarked on a gain-building exercise, where the resistance at $ 9,800 was tested but not broken.

The increase was attributed to enthusiasm following the rumor that PayPal, a major player in the payments market, was considering taking over cryptocurrencies. It seems that the breakout was not fundamentally or technically supported as Bitcoin plunged, reaching lows slightly below $ 9,000 on Thursday.

The drop to $ 8,988 (intraday low) comes less than a day after the expiration of long-term forward contacts on Bitcoin . More than 114,000 futures contracts valued at $ 1 billion will stop trading on June 26 on several exchanges such as Deribit, CME, Bakkt, LegerX and OKEx .

Futures contracts allow traders to sell long or short cryptocurrency assets without having to buy the underlying assets. Derivatives are executed over a period of time where sellers bet on the rise or fall of the price. According to Vishal Shah, an options market trader, "this is certainly the biggest expiration option of a country's BTC mile." CEO of Skew, a chain data analytics company, Emmanuel Goh:

With a large quarterly expiration, you tend to see some pinning, then the market changes after expiration.

It is believed that in some way, option traders influence the general direction of the asset price in a process called "pinning". In other words, futures market traders strive to influence the spot price of an asset ( Bitcoin ) in order to avoid large losses. As Shah explains:

Depending on where the open interest is dispersed, you may be in the game to pin the strikes. Most of the distribution of OI [open interest] in general is slightly higher.

As of this writing, Bitcoin is trading at $ 9,150 after losing 1.48% on the day. The price dropped slightly below $ 9,000 after hitting a wall at $ 9,300. $ 10,000 remains the ultimate resistance in the medium term. If the recovery does not materialize significantly, a dip to $ 8,000 should come into play after the expiration of the futures contracts on Friday.