Bitcoin options expiry volatility is set to amplify this week’s price action after BTC reclaimed $80,000 on the back of Nvidia’s Q2 FY27 earnings, which came in at $96.2 billion in revenue, roughly $4 billion above consensus, sending NVDA up more than 9% on Thursday and adding over $400 billion to its market cap in a single session.
BTC/USD touched a local high of $80,808 around Thursday’s Wall Street open. The Nasdaq Composite gained 1% on the day, with risk appetite briefly snapping back across both equities and crypto.
Nvidia’s Numbers Put the Beat in Context
The Q2 FY27 quarter, which ended 26 July 2026, produced revenue up 106% year-over-year and 18% quarter-on-quarter, per Nvidia’s own press release. Net income came in at $59.7 billion, up 126% year-over-year, with GAAP gross margins at 75.0%. Those are not soft beats.
For Q3 FY27, Nvidia guided for revenue of $54.0 billion (plus or minus 2%), with gross margins expected to ease slightly to around 73.5% on a non-GAAP basis. The company has not assumed any H20 chip shipments to China in that outlook, leaving a potential upside variable on the table.
According to CNBC, CFO Colette Kress told analysts on the earnings call that Nvidia expects fiscal 2028 revenue growth of 70%, well above the 44% analysts had pencilled in, citing customer forecasts that ‘point to our growth doubling next year,’ though supply constraints temper the formal guidance.
Bitcoin Options Expiry Volatility and the Thinning Sell Wall
Friday’s Deribit expiry covers 81,700 BTC options contracts. The notional value is reported differently across sources: the snippet cites $6.58 billion while CoinDesk, drawing on Deribit Metrics data directly, puts the figure at $6.44 billion. Using the Deribit Metrics figure as the closer-to-source read, the expiry accounts for nearly 20% of total BTC open interest on the platform.
The bitcoin volatility index (DVOL) rose 30% in relative terms over the prior week, and call-put skew flipped from negative to positive, per the same CoinDesk report. That positioning shift matters for how the expiry resolves.
Analyst David Eng described the ask-side liquidity above spot as ‘weakening’ into the expiry. ‘BTC is compressed under resistance just as the derivatives structure holding it there is about to weaken. Break $82K and the path to $85K+ gets much cleaner,’ he told his X followers. Crypto liquidations over the 24 hours to Thursday ran to around $417 million, per CoinGlass data, as buyers chipped into that overhead zone.
Warsh at Jackson Hole: Inflation Still the Priority
Markets were also pricing in Chair Kevin Warsh’s keynote at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City‘s Jackson Hole symposium, running 27–29 August with around 120 officials and economists from more than 70 countries. The theme this year: ‘Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy.’
The 30-year Treasury yield had closed at 5.31% on 17 August, its highest level since 2007, setting the macro backdrop for the speech. When Warsh’s address, titled ‘In Our Time,’ was published on 28 August, it confirmed the hawkish lean markets had feared: ‘inflation is running above our 2% target,’ Warsh said, adding that ‘the Fed’s predominant focus right now should be on prices.’
Nationwide chief US economist Kathy Bostjancic had flagged the stakes beforehand: ‘Chairman Warsh’s address is poised to be extremely key given the jump in long-term interest rates and high uncertainty over the path of inflation and Fed’s reaction function going forward,’ she told CNBC.
The combination of a hawkish Fed chair and a derivatives structure set to loosen into Friday’s close gives the $82,000 level its near-term binary character. A clean hold above it opens the $85,000 handle; a rejection pushes the re-test of $80,000 support back into focus.
