The post Quadruple Witching 2026: Bitcoin’s Most Dangerous Trading Day of the Quarter Has Arrived appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News
One of the most turbulent days in the financial calendar has arrived. Quadruple witching, a quarterly event where trillions of dollars in derivatives expire simultaneously, is happening today, and crypto markets are already feeling the pressure.
Four times a year, on the third Friday of March, June, September, and December, four major types of derivatives expire on the same day: stock index futures, stock index options, single stock options, and single stock futures. Traders must close, roll over, or settle all positions at once, causing a sharp surge in trading activity and often violent price swings across financial markets.
Today’s expiration is not just big. According to Goldman Sachs, it is the largest ever recorded.
More than $7.1 trillion in notional options exposure is set to expire today, including roughly $5 trillion tied to the S&P 500 index alone and $880 billion linked to single stocks. December options expirations are typically the biggest of the year, but Goldman says this one eclipses all prior records.
To put the scale into context, the options expiring today represent notional exposure equal to approximately 10.2% of the total market capitalisation of the Russell 3000. That is not a quarterly routine. That is a historic event.
Crypto does not operate in isolation from traditional finance anymore. Bitcoin increasingly moves alongside broader risk assets, meaning sharp equity swings have a habit of spilling directly into digital markets.
Historical data from 2025 paints a consistent picture. Bitcoin tended to show muted or flat performance on quadruple witching days themselves, followed by weakness in the days and weeks after. In September last year, a sharp post-witching decline took Bitcoin from $177,000 all the way down to $108,000. In June, it drifted to a local bottom just two days after the event.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is holding around $69,800, with Ethereum at $2,134, XRP at $1.43, and Solana at $88.93. The broader market Fear and Greed Index sits at just 30, firmly in fear territory.
Even after today passes, the market is not in the clear. A separate $13.5 billion in crypto derivatives are set to expire on Deribit on March 27, just one week away. Positioning data shows traders are leaning toward volatility strategies rather than strong directional bets, signalling the market is bracing for continued turbulence rather than a clean recovery.
The post Top Analyst Reveals What’s Next For Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP Prices appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News
Gareth Soloway, Chief Market Strategist at VerifiedInvesting.com, is doubling down on his bullish crypto calls, and so far, the charts are proving him right.
About a month ago, when Bitcoin had just flushed to $60,000 and retail sentiment was bearish, Soloway turned bullish. Most people thought he was wrong.
“When I see eight out of ten comments calling me a clown, I put more money into the trade,” he explained. For Soloway, extreme retail fear is not a warning, it is an invitation.
Bitcoin is now trading above $74,000, marking eight consecutive days of gains. Soloway says the level to keep an eye on is a daily close above $74,000. If that holds, the next targets are $80,000 to $85,000.
The resistance at this level is not random. Soloway traced it back to a long-term trend line connecting multiple major price pivots, a classic technical setup where old support becomes new resistance. A clean break above it, he says, opens the door to the next significant leg higher.
Ethereum has broken out of what Soloway describes as a textbook inside bar pattern, a structure where price compresses after a strong reversal before launching higher. ETH is now trading above $3,300 and confirming the breakout.
His price targets: $2,600 to $2,800 — which from the recent consolidation low would represent a 45% move.
Soloway is also long Solana, currently up around 15% on the trade, with targets of $115 to $118 after clearing the $100 resistance zone.
For the XRP community, Soloway revealed he picked up XRP over the weekend after spotting the same breakout pattern forming across the chart. He is already up 10% on the position and says the setup looks nearly identical to the other trades that have worked.
Despite the short-term bullishness, Soloway is clear-eyed about the macro backdrop. The larger trend, he says, still points downward.
The post $2.1 Billion Bitcoin and Ethereum Options Expiry Today appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News
Today, the crypto market is going to see a slight volatility as Bitcoin and Ethereum options worth about $2.1 billion are set to expire. The market is already under pressure, so traders are watching important levels closely, Bitcoin’s “max pain” at $70,000 and Ethereum’s at $2,150, which could affect prices in the short term.
A large batch of Bitcoin options worth around $1.7 billion is expiring today. According to Deribit, nearly 23,000 contracts are set to close, with a put-call ratio of 0.96, showing slightly balanced market sentiment.
The most important level right now is the “max pain” point near $70,000. This is the price where most option traders may face losses, and markets often move toward this level during expiry.
Recently, Bitcoin tried to break above $75,000 but failed to hold that level. This rejection pushed the price back near $70,547, which is now acting as a key support zone.
At the same time, a large number of bearish bets are sitting around the $60,000 level, showing that some traders are still expecting downside risk.
Adding to the pressure, spot Bitcoin ETFs have seen outflows of $253.7 million for two straight days, indicating that some investors are pulling money out in the short term.
Ethereum is also part of today’s expiry event, with around $370 million worth of options contracts closing. As per the Deribit data, about 176,000 ETH contracts are expiring, with a put-call ratio of 1.04, showing slightly bearish sentiment.
The max pain level for Ethereum stands near $2,150, which could act as a magnet for price movement as expiry approaches.
Options expiry often brings short-term volatility as traders adjust their positions. Looking at the last week, a similar event pushed Bitcoin up by nearly 8% and Ethereum by around 10% after expiry.
However, this time the total expiry size is slightly smaller at $2.1 billion compared to last week’s $2.4 billion. This could mean lower market pressure, but price swings are still expected.
On the other hand, Polymarket predicts a 38% chance that Bitcoin could reach $65K by the end of March 2026.
For now, the market remains cautious, as traders watch closely to see if this option’s expiry will impact current Bitcoin price levels.
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Options expiry can trigger short-term volatility as traders close or adjust positions, often pulling prices toward key “max pain” levels before stabilizing.
Not necessarily. Expiry usually causes temporary volatility, not crashes. Market direction depends on broader sentiment, liquidity, and macro factors.
The post Why is Bitcoin Price Dropping Today: $72,500 Rejection and Support Levels to Watch appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News
Bitcoin is under pressure on the shorter timeframe, trading below a critical resistance zone after failing to hold recent gains. The bulls have not shown up yet and the structure points toward at least one more low before any meaningful recovery can be confirmed.
Bitcoin got rejected at the resistance zone between $70,700 and $72,500 after attempting a move higher. That zone is the single most important level on the chart right now. Without a clean and sustained break above it, the market remains in a downward consolidation pattern with bears firmly in control.
The current move lower is a three-stage structure rather than a clean downtrend, meaning a reversal is possible but needs confirmation first. That confirmation only comes from a decisive break above $70,700 to $72,500, ideally sustained across multiple candles rather than a brief spike that quickly reverses.
Until that happens the path of least resistance remains lower.
If Bitcoin continues lower from here the levels that matter are:
None of these levels guarantee a bounce. They are areas where buyers have previously shown interest and where the market could attempt to stabilise.
If bears stay in control: Bitcoin drifts lower through $69,450 toward $67,760 without any meaningful buying response at current levels. The consolidation extends further and the recovery timeline gets pushed out.
If bulls return: Bitcoin builds a base around current levels and produces a strong move above $70,700. A sustained hold above $72,500 would be the clearest signal that the balance of power has shifted back toward buyers and a more meaningful recovery is underway.
The post BTQ Technologies Deploys First Working Quantum-Resistant Bitcoin Implementation as Core Development Stalls appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News
Quantum computers cannot break Bitcoin yet. The emphasis is on yet. A Canadian technology company just became the first to deploy a working implementation of the solution Bitcoin developers have been debating for months, and it did so while the broader Bitcoin ecosystem has made virtually no progress toward the same goal.
BTQ Technologies activated Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 360 on its Bitcoin Quantum testnet this week, moving what had been a theoretical proposal into functioning, testable infrastructure available to developers, miners, and researchers right now.
The issue sits inside Taproot, the upgrade Bitcoin activated in 2021 that underpins Lightning Network, BitVM, and other next-generation applications. Taproot’s design includes a mechanism that can expose public keys on-chain. When quantum computers become powerful enough to run Shor’s algorithm at scale, those exposed public keys become vulnerable to attack.
BIP 360 addresses this by introducing a new output type called Pay-to-Merkle-Root, which preserves all of Taproot’s scripting capabilities while removing the specific mechanism that creates the quantum vulnerability. It is a targeted fix rather than a rebuild.
The company has implemented BIP 360 on a live testnet with more than 50 miners, over 100,000 blocks mined, and full end-to-end wallet tooling that allows users to create, fund, sign, and spend quantum-resistant transactions today.
It also includes five post-quantum signature algorithms operating inside the script tree, complete address creation, transaction construction, and confirmation capabilities.
Bitcoin’s governance culture is deliberately conservative. SegWit took 8.5 years from concept to adoption. Taproot took 7.5 years. BIP 360 has entered the official proposal repository but Bitcoin Core has made no implementation progress.
Meanwhile US federal agencies face an April 2026 deadline to submit post-quantum transition plans. The European Union has set a 2030 quantum-resistance target for critical infrastructure. Canada’s new procurement requirements take effect next month.
BTQ’s CEO Olivier Roussy Newton framed the urgency simply: “The industry can’t afford to treat quantum resistance as a theoretical exercise.”
The quantum threat to Bitcoin is not immediate. But the time required to implement a fix, measured historically in years, suggests that waiting until the threat becomes urgent may already be waiting too long.
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