Bitcoin Faces Headwinds as Options Expiry and Technical Levels Weigh on Price – 27/9/2025
Bitcoin (BTC) closed the week at $111,480.33, marking a roughly 5% drop in what is historically the cryptocurrency’s third-weakest week of the year. Q3 finished up around 1%, while September held relatively 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 — the level where option holders experience the largest losses — acting as a gravitational anchor for the spot price.
A key technical level is the short-term holder cost basis at $110,775, reflecting the average on-chain acquisition price for coins moved over the past six months. BTC tested this line in August, and historically in bull markets, it revisits it multiple times. So far this year, the only significant break below was during the April tariff-induced sell-off, when BTC fell to around $74,500.
Analyst Caleb Franzen noted that 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 must hold above the prior support level near $107,252 from September 1.
Macro Backdrop
The U.S. economy grew 3.8% annualized in Q2, above the 3.3% estimate, marking the strongest growth since Q2 2023. Jobless claims fell to 218,000, the lowest since mid-July. Core PCE inflation rose 0.2% in August.
Treasury yields on 10-year notes bounced off 4% support to near 4.2%, while the dollar index (DXY) remains around long-term support at 98. Metals continue to rally, with silver at $45, approaching historical highs. U.S. equities hover near record levels, but Bitcoin remains over 10% below its peak.
Bitcoin-Exposed Equities
Bitcoin treasury firms continue to face heavy 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 — illustrating underperformance relative to BTC.
MSTR’s enterprise mNAV is 1.44, considering all shares, debt, and perpetual preferred stock minus cash. Three of four perpetual preferred stocks — STRK, STRC, and STRF — remain positive in lifetime returns, supporting ongoing BTC purchases led by Executive Chairman Michael Saylor.
Low BTC volatility presents an additional challenge. Implied volatility has fallen below 40, reducing speculative interest. Annualized standard deviation of BTC’s daily log returns has dropped from 89% over the past year to 49% in the last 30 days, dampening trading activity.
Metaplanet (3350), the fifth-largest BTC treasury company, holds 25,555 BTC and has about $500 million left to deploy from its international offering. Yet its share price remains at 517 yen ($3.45), more than 70% below its all-time high. The company’s mNAV has fallen sharply to 1.12 from 8.44 in June, with a market cap of $3.94 billion versus BTC NAV of $2.9 billion and an average acquisition cost of $106,065 per coin.
