Tonight will be an unforgettable night for many traders who are watching the markets closely.

At 3:00 PM Vietnam time / 12:00 AM California midnight, Deribit exchange will experience a massive options expiration event—nearly $23.5 billion worth of Bitcoin options contracts will be collectively settled at the same time. How exaggerated is this number? It’s enough to cause severe short-term market volatility.

What’s truly worth caution is the "maximum pain" anchoring point of the price. Bitcoin at $96,000, Ethereum at $3,100. In the final moments before expiration, these levels often become focal points for mysterious forces—not mysticism, but the most realistic game rules in the options market.

When such large derivative positions need to be closed, the spot price often distorts wildly. But rather than betting on whether the price will be "manipulated," it’s better to think clearly: in this whirlpool of artificial volatility, how should your money be allocated? Surfing along with the market fluctuations, or shifting to assets that are less affected by derivative technicalities?

This kind of large-scale options expiration is essentially a "structural pressure" that the crypto market periodically faces. It has nothing to do with project fundamentals; it’s purely the concentrated clearing of financial derivative positions. But its power can create irrational price distortions and emotional panic in the short term.

Investors are faced with an old question: do you participate in this short-term game with massive contracts, or should you completely change your approach and seek asset allocations that naturally avoid such "technical interference"?