On the decentralized Lyra options market, there is a 20% probability that the price of Bitcoin will exceed $70,000 by the end of April.
Lyra is an options and futures exchange that runs on the decentralized blockchain Lyrachain, and according to DeFiLlama data, it is the largest decentralized exchange in the world for crypto options, with 50% of the global volume of options on DEX (approximately $32 million per day).
Summary
Bitcoin predictions based on the options market
At the moment on Lyra there are options expiring every Friday until the end of March, plus those expiring at the end of April.
At the moment, the price range for Bitcoin options expiring today is between $45,000 and $60,000, but for those expiring next week, it already extends from $40,000 to $62,000.
Since the current price is a bit below $52,000, today’s expirations do not seem to be particularly unbalanced, while those of next week are a bit more unbalanced, especially on the downside.
Therefore, it is possible that speculators are mainly betting on a possible decline in the coming days on Lyra.
However, the situation changes if you choose the options in second starting from March 8th.
In fact, the range for the fork goes from $48,000 to $60,000, although it must be said that the majority of bets are placed on short-term deadlines.
In other words, it seems that in the short term a negative sentiment prevails, while in the medium term a more neutral one prevails.
Subsequent deadlines have an even wider range, which certifies that uncertainty increases the further into the future we go.
Note that by the end of March the range widens to $34,000/$68,000, and by the end of April it extends to $32,000/$70,000.
The $70,000 target for Bitcoin options
According to Lyra’s founder, Nick Forster, a former options trader on Wall Street, these data imply that there is a probability of about 20% on Lyra that Bitcoin will reach new all-time highs by April 26, with a price even higher than $70,000.
20% is not much, especially since those data also suggest that the price could even drop to $34,000 in the same period, but it is not an irrelevant percentage.
It should also be noted that speculators had positioned themselves correctly on Lyra regarding the recent rise above $50,000, so these data should be taken seriously.
However, what emerges is that the chances of significantly exceeding $70,000 by the end of April are very low.
Overall, speculators seem to be quite bullish, although they may not necessarily be so in the very short term.
It is important to remember that there are still two months until the halving, during which it is unlikely that the price will do anything other than rise or move sideways.
Forster points out that on Lyra, trading activity for the April 26th expiration has so far focused on a possible further increase, with particular attention to prices of $64,000 and, precisely, $70,000.
Fourth halving coming up
The end of April deadline is important because it is the first post-halving.
To be honest, it is not yet known exactly when the halving should occur, but it is very likely to happen around mid-April, before the 26th deadline.
So in March the markets will prepare for the halving, while in April this will probably be the main event around which traders’ attention will be focused.
At this point, it is even better understood why speculators do not seem to be particularly bullish in the short term, that is, until the end of February, while they become more so in March, and especially in anticipation of the end of April.
However, it is also necessary to add that the Bitcoin mining hashrate is still significantly high, and this shortens the average block time of the blocks, which lately is almost always less than the canonical 10 minutes.
This factor could contribute to speeding up the timing to reach block 840,000 mining, which will trigger the halving, so it is also possible that it will happen one or two weeks earlier than the options expiration on April 26th.
The possible sell the news
However, this whole discussion does not take into consideration what could happen to the price of Bitcoin in the event of a sell the news after the halving.
Indeed, on one hand it is possible for the price of BTC to reach $64,000, or even $69,000 before the halving, on the other hand, however, it is also possible that following its occurrence it may retrace due to a true sell the news.
It is true that there are new ETFs that could soften the fall this time, but if the markets are currently starting to price in the halving, it is rather likely that they will trigger a sell the news after it has occurred.
The figures $64,000 and $69,000 are not chosen randomly, as the first one represents the highest peak that Bitcoin reached in April 2021, while the second one is the absolute highest peak of November 2021. This is probably why traders use them as reference points, even though they replace $69,000 with the psychological threshold of $70,000.
However, it must be added that it could still be a bit too difficult for Bitcoin to break through the $53,000 wall in the short term, and if it fails to do so, it is absolutely possible to imagine a correction over the weekend or next week.
It is also necessary to pay attention to the fact that in the case of short-term retracement, speculators’ forecasts on Lyra could also change, so none of this is absolute certainty.
