March 2024 Bitcoin option contracts - $8.3B+ on the table

Bitcoin options are financial derivatives that grant the holder the right to buy or sell Bitcoin at a predetermined price (the strike price) on or before a specified expiration date. These contracts come in two flavors:

• Call Options: These give the holder the right to buy Bitcoin at the strike price. Traders use call options when they anticipate a price increase.
• Put Options: These allow the holder to sell Bitcoin at the strike price. Put options are useful for hedging against potential price declines.

The end of March 2024 marks a critical settlement date for Bitcoin option contracts when there's about $8.3B+ Open Interest in the market.

Looking at the current OI in deribit, it's interesting that there's a really significant # of call contracts (option to buy) placed at 60k, 65, and 70k levels. What is even more interesting is the fact that the max pain price is $50k. As a result, there's a clear incentive for MMs to push the price to this range to make those call contracts worthless.

Do you think this has anything to do with how the market perform recently?

https://preview.redd.it/xma3en3kl8pc1.png?1838&format=png&auto=webp&s=279dd79802df4ad3c848332e3e23ca96f79d6819