Crypto options expire on a schedule, and that schedule shapes price behaviour in predictable ways. Knowing the expiry calendar — and what concentrates around each date — turns "random" volatility into something you can anticipate.
The rhythm of expiries
Crypto options, dominated by the major venues, expire daily and weekly for short-dated contracts, with larger monthly and especially quarterly expiries (end of March, June, September, December) carrying the heaviest open interest. The end-of-month and end-of-quarter dates are the ones that move markets, because that is where positioning piles up.
Daily and weekly expiries now carry enormous volume too, concentrating short-dated gamma into Friday settlements.
Why concentration matters
Large open interest at an expiry means large dealer gamma to hedge into it. As covered elsewhere, when dealers are net long gamma near heavy strikes, their hedging is mean-reverting — selling rallies, buying dips — which pins price toward those strikes and suppresses volatility into the expiry.
So the calendar tells you when to expect pinning behaviour: into a big monthly or quarterly expiry, price often compresses toward strikes with the most open interest. Range-bound, fade-the-extreme tape into a heavy Friday is frequently dealers defending gamma.
Post-expiry expansion
The flip side is what happens after. Once a large expiry settles, that gamma rolls off, and the stabilising hedging flow disappears. The result is a recurring pattern: post-expiry range expansion, as pent-up movement releases with the pin gone.
This is why volatility often picks up in the sessions following a major monthly or quarterly expiry. The calendar flags both the compression before and the expansion after.
Trading around the calendar
Practical uses:
- Mark the dates. Know the weekly, monthly, and quarterly expiries ahead of time.
- Into a heavy expiry, lean toward fade-the-extreme if dealers are long gamma near big strikes; respect breakouts if they are short gamma.
- After expiry, position for expansion rather than expecting the calm to persist.
- Cross-check max pain and gamma levels to see where the pin is likely to sit, treating them as a map of open interest rather than a guarantee.
Takeaway
The options expiry calendar — daily and weekly, with heavy monthly and quarterly dates — concentrates open interest and dealer gamma, which drives pinning into big expiries and range expansion after them. Mark the dates, expect compression toward heavy strikes into a major expiry, and position for volatility once that gamma rolls off. The calendar turns unexplained chop into anticipated behaviour.