Bitcoin Faces Pressure as Options Expiry and Key Technical Levels Weigh – 27/9/2025
Bitcoin (BTC) ended the week at $111,480.33, marking a roughly 5% decline in what is historically one of the cryptocurrency’s weakest weeks of the year. Q3 closed up about 1%, while September remained mostly flat.
Several factors contributed to the pullback. On Friday, over $17 billion in BTC options expired, with the “max pain” strike price at $110,000 — where option holders face the largest losses — acting as a gravitational center for the spot price.
A key technical level is the short-term holder cost basis at $110,775, reflecting the average acquisition price of coins moved in the past six months. BTC tested this line in August, and in bull markets, it typically revisits it multiple times. This year, the only major break below was during April’s tariff-driven sell-off, when BTC fell to around $74,500.
Analyst Caleb Franzen noted BTC has slipped below its 100-day exponential moving average (EMA), with the 200-day EMA at $106,186. To maintain the broader uptrend of higher highs and higher lows, BTC needs to hold above prior support around $107,252 from September 1.
Macro Backdrop
The U.S. economy grew 3.8% annualized in Q2, surpassing estimates, while initial jobless claims fell to 218,000, the lowest since mid-July. Core PCE inflation rose 0.2% in August.
U.S. 10-year Treasury yields bounced off 4% support to about 4.2%, while the dollar index (DXY) remains near long-term support at 98. Metals continue to rally, with silver approaching $45, near highs last seen in 1980 and 2011. U.S. equities hover near record levels, but BTC remains more than 10% below its peak.
Bitcoin-Exposed Equities
Bitcoin treasury companies continue to face steep multiple-to-net-asset-value (mNAV) compression. MicroStrategy (MSTR) is barely positive year-to-date, dipping below $300 at one point. Its ratio to BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) sits at 4.8 — the lowest since October 2024 — reflecting significant underperformance relative to BTC.
MSTR’s enterprise mNAV is 1.44, accounting for shares, debt, and perpetual preferred stock minus cash. Three of four perpetual preferred stocks — STRK, STRC, and STRF — maintain positive lifetime returns, supporting ongoing BTC acquisitions led by Executive Chairman Michael Saylor.
Lower BTC volatility adds pressure. Implied volatility has dropped below 40, reducing speculative interest. Annualized standard deviation of BTC’s daily log returns has fallen from 89% over the past year to 49% in the last 30 days, limiting trading opportunities.
Metaplanet (3350), the fifth-largest BTC treasury company, holds 25,555 BTC and has roughly $500 million left to deploy from its international offering. Yet its share price remains at 517 yen ($3.45), over 70% below its all-time high. Metaplanet’s mNAV has dropped sharply to 1.12 from 8.44 in June, with a market capitalization of $3.94 billion versus BTC NAV of $2.9 billion and an average acquisition cost of $106,065 per coin.
