Crypto's Triple Witching Hangover: $500M Wiped, $2.2B Options About to Expire Into the Void 🧹

Crypto markets absorbed more than $500 million in liquidations over the past 24 hours as Wall Street staged its largest-ever $8.3 trillion "triple witching" event, with another $2.2 billion in options on Bitcoin ($BTC), Ethereum ($ETH), XRP, and Solana ($SOL) set to expire on Friday. Coinglass data shows roughly $410 million of longs and $90 million of shorts were forced out in the latest session, bringing weekly liquidations above $150 billion across more than 122,000 traders.

Triple witching is a quarterly event in which stock options, index options, and index futures expire simultaneously, and it has historically coincided with sharp volatility. This quarter's expiry landed alongside a hawkish lean from the U.S. Federal Reserve and stalled U.S.–Iran peace talks, with Deribit-listed options traders pricing in further downside across major crypto assets.

The scale of the simultaneous equity-derivatives event — $8.3 trillion in notional exposure — has spilled over into digital assets, where traders are bracing for additional liquidations if derivatives positioning fails to find a floor. More than $2.2 billion in notional value tied to $BTC, $ETH, $XRP, and $SOL options expires today, according to exchange data.

Market participants are watching whether any buy-the-dip response materializes after the weekly wipeout, as the combination of macro headlines, Fed posture, and a record quarterly expiry continues to weigh on sentiment across both traditional and crypto markets.