Ethereum price prediction: twice as many puts as calls ahead of Friday’s options expiry

What is confirmed: on Friday, November 13, at 9 a.m. CET, Ethereum options on 135,831 ETH expire on the options exchange Deribit. This expiry carries 90,778 ETH in put options and only 45,053 ETH in call options, so twice as many hedges against falling prices as bets on rising ones. At the $2,000 strike alone, 48,461 ETH of puts are open, as measured on Monday evening. Our assessment follows further down: the cluster of puts shows where large market participants see their pain threshold, but it is no roadmap for the price.

Ether itself trades at about $2,123 on Monday evening according to CoinGecko, roughly €1,895. Within 24 hours the price fell 4.9 percent, with a daily range of $2,085 to $2,234. Where the price could head over a horizon of months is covered in our Ethereum price prediction. This piece is about the next four trading days and about a figure the price chart does not show: how open options are spread across individual price levels.

Deribit expiry on November 13: 90,778 puts against 45,053 calls

Deribit is by far the largest venue for crypto options. One contract there refers to exactly one ether, so open positions can be read directly in ETH. The exchange publishes the data through a public interface; the figures in this article come from a query on Monday evening at 7:45 p.m. CET.

Across all maturities the picture looks very different from Friday’s. In total, Deribit holds 992,750 ETH in open calls and 533,131 ETH in open puts, a put-to-call ratio of 0.54. The market as a whole therefore remains positioned for rising prices. Only this week’s expiry stands out: for November 13 the put-call ratio is 2.01. For the November 27 maturity it is 0.51, and 0.39 for December 25.

At Monday evening’s price, Friday’s expiry holds options on roughly $288 million of underlying value, about $193 million of it in puts. That is not a major expiry like the one at the end of the month, when more than 322,000 ETH ran out on October 30. The imbalance is unusually pronounced, however, and it is concentrated on a single level.

Put options and max pain explained

A put option gives its buyer the right to sell ether at a fixed price. If the price falls below it, the put gains value. Anyone who holds ether and wants protection against a crash buys such puts like insurance and pays a premium for them. A call option is the counterpart: it gives the right to buy at a fixed price and pays off when prices rise.

Max pain is the price at which the buyers of all options for a given expiry together suffer the largest loss and the sellers have to pay out the least. For November 13, our own calculation from Deribit data puts this point at $2,250, a good 6 percent above Monday evening’s price. The idea behind it: large option sellers continuously hedge their positions in the spot market and thereby pull the price towards this point. For individual expiries this pull is not proven; in quiet weeks the price tends to hit the max pain level by chance.

The distribution of open positions across strike prices is therefore more telling than the single max pain figure. It shows where hedges and bets sit, and thus which price ranges traders will watch most closely on Friday.

The $2,000 put wall in numbers

More than half of all puts for Friday hang on a single strike price. The table shows the largest positions of the expiry:

The 48,461 ETH at $2,000 correspond to about $103 million of underlying value. On Monday evening these puts are still about 6 percent out of the money, so they only pay if ether falls below $2,000 by Friday morning. The 13,203 ETH at $2,200, by contrast, are already in the money. On the other side, calls are thinly spread between $2,250 and $2,600, with no single strike above 6,300 ETH.

The exchange does not disclose where the put wall comes from. Two explanations are typical: funds and large holders hedge their holdings against a slide below the round number, or traders bet deliberately on a further decline. Either way, the level will draw particular attention on Friday. If ether moves close to it, the sellers of these puts have to adjust their hedges, which can amplify the move in the short term.

Broken since Sunday: the 30-day low at $2,192

On Sunday evening ether was still at $2,234. In our article on the growing ETH supply we had named $2,192 as the low of the previous 30 days and described a daily close below it as a break of the trading range so far. That level did not hold. On Sunday evening, derivatives exchanges liquidated leveraged long positions; by Monday lunchtime ether slipped below $2,100 and set a new monthly low at $2,085.

This shifts the picture down one notch. The round $2,000 level, still a good 10 percent away on Sunday, has moved to within about 6 percent. It currently equals roughly €1,785. Also new: on the options market, ether carries the largest hedge of the week at exactly this point.

Ether below the 200-day moving average at $2,154

The 200-day moving average is the average closing price of the last 200 days. Many funds use it as the line between a long-term uptrend and downtrend. Calculated from CoinGecko’s daily prices, it currently sits at about $2,154 for ether. At $2,123 the price trades just below it. The 50-day line runs much higher at about $2,471; the gap shows how far ether has fallen since mid-October. Over 30 days the loss is a good 15 percent.

For the week this produces a clear zone: between $2,154 at the top and $2,000 at the bottom lie the moving average, the new monthly low at $2,085 and the put wall. A daily close back above $2,154 would put Monday’s break into perspective. A close below $2,085 opens the way to the round number where the puts are clustered.

Implied volatility at 57 points, funding rate near zero

How turbulent the market expects the coming days to be is shown by Deribit’s DVOL volatility index. It expresses ether’s expected annualised fluctuation in percent, derived from option prices. On Monday it stood at 57.1 points. On November 4 it was still at 51.9 points; since the slump of November 5 it has held between 55 and 58. For a week now, the options market has priced in larger swings than at the start of the month, without tipping into panic.

The funding rate of the perpetual ETH contract on Deribit was practically zero over the past 24 hours. Long positions pay this fee to short positions when more traders bet on rising prices, and vice versa. A value close to zero means that after the weekend’s liquidations, the excess of leveraged buyers has been worked off. A further forced sell-off therefore lacks the fuel that was still there on Sunday.

US inflation data on Tuesday as the week’s second key date

Before the options expire on Friday, the new US consumer price index is due on Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. CET. It shapes expectations for the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy, and ether is currently moving more sharply than bitcoin: in the 24 hours to Monday evening, ether fell 4.9 percent and bitcoin 1.7 percent. Higher-than-expected inflation would sharpen rate worries and increase the pressure on the $2,000 level. A weaker reading could lead put buyers to unwind their hedges before Friday, which would take selling pressure off the derivatives market.

Ethereum options at the end of November: calls at $3,000 dominate

A look at the next major expiry puts Friday’s figures into perspective. For November 27, 165,822 ETH in calls and 84,363 ETH in puts are open. The largest single position of this expiry is 19,695 ETH in calls at $3,000; by our own calculation, max pain sits at $2,400. Holders of these options are at least partly betting on a recovery by the end of the month. Against this background, this week’s hedges look like short-term protection over a turbulent date rather than a bet on a lasting crash.

Leverage, stop-loss and holding period before the expiry

For investors in Germany who hold ether directly, the figures point to three concrete issues. First, leverage: if you trade ether with leverage, you should know your liquidation price before the price runs into the zone between $2,085 and $2,000. At ten times leverage, a drop of less than 10 percent is enough there to lose the entire margin. Which platforms offer which fees and safety mechanisms is shown in our comparison of perp DEXs.

Second, the stop-loss: a sell order just below a round number is often filled at a worse price than planned during fast moves. Prices jump around expiry dates in particular. If you place such an order, check with your provider whether it offers a stop-limit order with a price floor.

Third, tax: in Germany, gains from selling ether are tax-free after a holding period of one year; below that, private sales benefit from an exemption limit of €1,000 a year. Anyone who bought their coins in November 2025 is now approaching this deadline. Selling out of nervousness a few days before it runs out can cost more than the price drop itself. Where the political debate on the holding period stands is summarised on our page on the status of the holding period reform.

Our assessment: the put wall at $2,000 is a sign of caution, not of capitulation. In favour of this: the hedges are concentrated on a single short-dated expiry, while options for the end of November and December are clearly dominated by calls, and the funding rate is at zero after the liquidations. Against it: ether has fallen below the 200-day line, Sunday’s 30-day low did not hold, and it keeps losing ground against bitcoin. In the newsroom’s view, the week will be decided in two places: on Tuesday by the inflation data, and on Friday by whether ether stands above $2,000 before 9 a.m. This is not a buy recommendation; with cryptocurrencies, a total loss is possible.

Ethereum options expiry: until 9 a.m. on Friday, $2,000 is the level that counts

This week’s figures can be sorted in three steps:

1. Note the levels: $2,154 as the 200-day line, $2,085 as the new monthly low and $2,000 as the put wall. If you buy or sell ether through an exchange, you will find providers’ fees in our crypto exchange comparison.
2. Check your leverage: review your liquidation price and margin before 2:30 p.m. CET on Tuesday. If you prefer to trade through a regulated broker, providers and costs are listed in our crypto broker comparison.
3. Put your holdings to work: if you hold for the long term and want to sit out the week, you can earn yield on ether through staking. Providers and returns are in our comparison of staking platforms.

(As of November 9, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)