Everyone saw funding flip back to greed overnightthe asymmetry is that the ETF funds sold into it and the ETH whales kept building their short.
Case #20260909 · 09.09.2026 05:13 UTC · BTC$79,174 / ETH$2,506 · analysis: Fable 5.1 by Anthropic
📅YESTERDAY
No new settlement since yesterday's issue: the 09.09 expiry settles at 08:00 UTC, after this snapshot, so its result lands in tomorrow's ledger. A reminder of the 08.09 expiry: BTC settled 0.13% under the market-maker break-even corridor, ETH matched its max pain, and the corridor held.
No whale cases closed with a result over the day; one case expiring today was marked closed by the code before settlement — details in the paid part.
⚡THE GIST
• The Hyperliquid perp whales in BTC shifted their net $101M toward long over the week — the biggest weekly shift in a month, though the tilt still runs 3.0 times in favour of the short; in ETH the short keeps building and accelerating.
• The Deribit options book has quietly stacked almost 15,000 calls at $81,000 — that's the call wall itself, and over the day it thickened by another 2,500 contracts.
• The spot ETF funds sold on Tuesday: $47M left the BTC funds in a day, though the week to 08.09 stays positive, only slightly slimmer than the week before.
• BTC funding flipped back over the day: longs pay shorts again, the leveraged crowd is greedy again — and the gap between the crowd and the whales set a new monthly maximum.
• Verdict — continuation: the whales in the two assets still look in opposite directions, and the witnesses split — insurance and the crowd side with the whales, funding and the week's fund inflow stand against them.
• 📊 Our Polygon — Pendulum: standing position, $0 on the day, +$9,956 in total since 11.05.
• 📊 Our Polygon — signals: best — Dust Strategy V2 +$90,719 at a 5% win rate · worst — Wheel Trail V8 −$8,429. Table at the bottom.
🐋WHALES: WHAT CHANGED — three arenas
Arena one — Hyperliquid futures. Two assets still tell two stories, but in BTC the story got louder over the day. In BTC the short-over-long tilt stayed at 3.0 times, same as yesterday, but both sides thickened over the day — the short three times more than the long. Over the week the net shifted $101M toward long — double the weekly shift in yesterday's issue: the turn we flagged as a weak sign has become the biggest in a month. Yesterday evening's trimming of the longs had reversed by night. ETH is the opposite: the short has been building all week and sped up over the last day (how we track whale positions). Overleveraged whales under watch: 54 against 61 yesterday, 63% of them standing long — there's less fuel under the market. None is close to a margin call.
Arena two — Deribit options. Two separate whale positions here, and today both look up in both assets. The first — quiet accumulation in small lots outside the blocks. In BTC the book stacked almost 15,000 calls at $81,000 over the week against 12,600 yesterday, spread across eight expiries. In ETH the lean changed over the day: calls at two strikes above the market now weigh twice as much as the puts beneath it. The second — block trades (what a block is). Over two days the snapshot recognised 12 structures in BTC against 32 yesterday: the block market went quiet. The most visible remains yesterday's — a strangle sold with an 18.09 expiry, a position on price staying inside a wide corridor. The two new cases of the day both run across two expiries, rare for this book; legs and premiums are in the paid part.
Arena three — money at the exchange border. Cash comes in, coins go out — and almost none of what leaves heads to exchanges. The "bridge" channel is USDC cash: over seven days $59.6M came in and $4.9M went out — twelve times more entered than left. The "Unit" channel is the coins themselves: in BTC withdrawals exceeded deposits ($13.9M against $5.6M); in ETH the inflow was twice the outflow. Where the withdrawals go: only $4M of the $29.8M withdrawn went to exchange addresses — the rest to players from the registry, where the coin is held, not sold. Border snapshot 09.09, 05:19 UTC.
This is positioning, not a direction forecast.
🧭CROSS-CHECK — five camps of witnesses
What the funds are doing. Spot ETFs are the only camp that measures purchases of the coin itself, not a leveraged position. After the long weekend the funds traded again, and the first day was a sale: on Tuesday 08.09 $47M left the BTC funds and $24M left the ETH funds. The selling came mostly from Grayscale's GBTC and Fidelity's FBTC. The week to 08.09 still stays positive, but it's shrinking: $724M went into the BTC funds against $804M the week before. In ETH the shrinkage is sharper — $106M against $797M the week before, almost eight times less. This confirms the whales: one day of selling after weeks of buying is the side where the whales stand; but one day isn't a reversal of the flow.
What the options market says. This camp measures one thing: what insurance costs on the Deribit book. Our fear-and-greed index stands at 83 out of 100 — the same as yesterday; extreme greed that's no longer growing. The price of insurance is rising for a second day: BTC two-day vol sits at the 50th percentile of its own hourly history since February against the 36th yesterday — right in the middle of the range. The market is paying for protection what it usually does, and that's the first time in a week. This confirms the whales: the book gets pricier on the same day the funds sold and the ETH whales built their short.
What the futures say. This camp measures who pays whom to hold a position. BTC funding on Hyperliquid flipped for the second time in two days: +0.010% in eight-hour terms against −0.003% yesterday — longs pay shorts again, the leveraged crowd has gone back to greed (what funding is). The BTC futures basis stays wide, the term price above spot. This contradicts the whales: yesterday this camp crossed to the whales' side, today it went back — an unreliable witness, and we're lowering the weight of its evidence.
What the crowd is doing. This camp measures how retail accounts stand against the whales. On Bybit perps 57% of BTC accounts stand long against 55% yesterday, ETH66% unchanged. The gap between the crowd and the whales in BTC widened to 31.4 points against 30.3 yesterday and sits in the 93rd percentile of its monthly history — a new monthly maximum, the second day running. The gap itself is structural; the event is its motion, and today there's motion again. This confirms the whales: retail adds to long precisely while the whales hold short.
Any signs of stress. This camp measures whether anyone has already been forced out of the market. Among the top Hyperliquid whales, one forced closure over the day, a $2.3M long — yesterday there were none. On OKX swaps $411k was liquidated, mostly longs; that's 10% of the week's volume — an even background, no acceleration. This camp is silent: one liquidation isn't a cascade.
Again: this is positioning, not a direction forecast.
🌡ALTSEASON — the classic and our barometer
The classic altseason index stands at 40.0 out of 100 — bitcoin-season territory, but over the day it rose almost two points from 38.3.
Our barometer watches money, not prices, and counts it from the Hyperliquid perp registry. Alts' share of open interest is 43.6% — $4.90B of the whole market's $11.25B, unchanged over the day.
Hot funding cooled for a second day running: 38% of contracts against 57% yesterday and 88% the day before — the heat in alts is fading faster than any other gauge of ours.
Retail in the top-10 coins stands 68.3% long; the hottest are DOGE and XRP, both near 77%.
Whales in alts are structurally short: only 34.7% long across $1.39B of positions, the biggest of them in HYPE. That gap is permanent; the signal is in its CHANGE — and over the day it didn't move.
Full barometer: indiciadesk.com/en/altseason
⚖️VERDICT OF THE DAY
continuation ⟳ — the same construct as yesterday: the whales in the two assets look in opposite directions, and over the day that split didn't narrow, it deepened — in BTC the week's shift toward long became the biggest in a month, in ETH the short is accelerating. The witnesses split: insurance is getting pricier and the crowd is pulling away from the whales to a monthly maximum, while funding went back against the whales and the week's fund inflow stays positive.
What this does NOT mean. It isn't a claim that BTC goes up and ETH goes down. A split between the assets and between the witnesses means exactly one thing: there's no shared thesis in the market, and any signal today carries less weight than on days of agreement.
🔒In today's full RADAR:
— the market's biggest short has pushed its unrealised loss to the deepest in a week, and next to it a high-leverage short has appeared with a buffer of only one percent to liquidation — with sizes and who it is;
— case #1061: a BTC structure across two expiries, for which a whale paid more than half a bitcoin — legs, net premium and payoff profile.
ANALYST access → indiciadesk.com/en/agent
💎DEEP
🔒WHALES IN DETAIL 💠
Portraits from the Hyperliquid registry, snapshot 03:46 UTC. Nicknames aren't treated as identification.
The market's biggest loss.ETH SHORT $238.1M, leverage 5×, entry $2,263, uPnL −$21.7M, liquidation at $3,573 — 44% above spot. Account $112.3M. Over the week the address added 34,089 ETH; yesterday the position was $237.4M — almost unchanged over the day, but the loss is now the deepest in a week. The same address in BTC. SHORT $159.2M, leverage 5×, entry $72,155, uPnL −$13.1M, liquidation at $130,206 (+66%) — the size didn't change over the day. A second address with the same pattern.ETH SHORT $115.6M and BTC SHORT $73.0M, both at 5× leverage, uPnL −$15.6M and −$11.8M, liquidations at $3,744 and $142,618 on a $61.7M account. Together the two addresses carry $62.2M of unrealised loss against $61.3M yesterday. A third big short.ETH SHORT $80.4M at 15× leverage, entry $2,175, uPnL −$10.2M, liquidation at $3,540 (+42%), account $40.2M. Over the week 3,737 ETH added. The market's biggest gain.ETH LONG $49.8M, leverage only 4×, entry $1,936, uPnL +$11.1M, liquidation at $1,029 — 59% below spot, account $12.5M. Held for at least a week. Next to it a long of $75.4M at 20×, entry $2,134, uPnL +$10.8M, liquidation at $1,756. The risky side.ETH LONG $97.3M at 25× leverage with liquidation at $2,374 — 5% under spot, account $7.4M; over the week the position added 3,025 ETH. Nearest to triggering.BTC SHORT $43.6M at 40× leverage, entry $76,902, liquidation at $79,539 — only 1% above spot on a $1.1M account; over the week the address added 338BTC to the short, and the position is now $948k in the red. Yesterday the buffer was 4%. The address carries a self-signed nickname; that's a nick, not identification. New BTC shorts. SHORT $28.3M at 20×, entry $78,463, liquidation at $83,151 (+6%), account $2.0M — a week ago the position didn't exist. SHORT $19.7M at 40×, entry $78,585, liquidation at $83,287 (+6%), account $1.4M — 242BTC added over the week. Both addresses have no public label. A leveraged long.BTC LONG $19.4M at 40×, entry $78,657, liquidation at $54,755 (−30%), account $4.5M — new this week, self-signed.
Block structures in the snapshot — two new cases, both from the Deribit book. Case #1061 · BTC call ratio spread across two expiries: 30 calls at $80,000 bought for 30.10.2026, 50 calls at $82,000 sold for 25.09.2026 — 80 contracts, entered at $78,758. Net premium about 0.72BTC paid (≈$57k): the 30 far calls cost more than the 50 nearer ones. It gains if price doesn't run sharply past $82,000 before 25.09 and then climbs into October. Rare.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-09-25. Кит заплатив $57k премії. Беззбитковість: $81 893 і $82 161.
Case #1062 · BTC put diagonal on two neighbouring days: 25 puts at $79,500 bought for 09.09.2026, 25 puts at $80,000 sold for 10.09.2026 — 50 contracts, entered at $78,758. Net premium about 0.22BTC received (≈$17k). The first leg settles today at 08:00 UTC. Rare.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-09-09. Кит отримав $17k премії. Беззбитковості в показаному діапазоні немає.
Case #1059 · BTC strangle sold: 100 puts at $72,000 and 100 calls at $86,000 sold, expiry 18.09.2026 — 200 contracts, entered at $78,310, second day in play. Net premium about 0.70BTC received (≈$55k): the whale collects premium for price staying inside $72,000–$86,000 until 18.09.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-09-18. Кит отримав $55k премії. Беззбитковість: $71 452 і $86 548.
Case #948 · ETH condor at $1,700/$1,900/$2,800/$3,000, size 11,500, entered at $2,462, expiry 25.09.2026 — fifteenth day in play. Net premium about 36.8ETH received (≈$91k): the whale is paid for price staying between $1,900 and $2,800 — it sold the inner strikes.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-09-25. Кит отримав $91k премії. Беззбитковість: $1 867 і $2 830.
Case #546 · ETH strangle at $1,000/$4,000, size 7,500, entered at $1,806, expiry 25.06.2027 — sixty-sixth day in play. Net premium about 293ETH paid (≈$530k) — a position on a big move either way.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2027-06-25. Кит заплатив $530k премії. Беззбитковість: $859 і $4 141.
Closed by the code over the day: case #1050 — a BTC condor at $77,500/$79,500/$80,500/$82,500, 200 contracts expiring today, entered at $79,436. The code closed it before settlement at the current price of $78,758: price left the inner $79,500–$80,500 corridor downward, but the premium received, about 0.57BTC, covers the loss on the sold lower leg — by the code's estimate the whale is about +$8k. The final figure comes after the 08:00 UTC settlement. ΔOI over the week, both ways:BTC+14,857 calls at $81,000 (8 expiries), +3,985 at $82,000 (84% for 25.09 and 11.09) and +3,942 at $80,000. ETH: +21,281 calls at $2,800 (87% for 18.09) and +12,936 at $2,600 against +10,807 puts at $2,400.
🔬Who exactly
Both of the biggest shorts are Abraxas Capital Mgmt (Heka Funds): two addresses of one house, ETH and BTC on each. Over the day the house didn't change its sizes; together $62.2M of unrealised loss against $61.3M yesterday.
The third big ETH short is Fasanara Capital: $80.4M, 15× leverage, uPnL −$10.2M on a $40.2M account; 3,737 ETH added over the week.
The risky 25× ETH long with a 5% buffer is Machi Big Brother.
The 40× BTC short with only a 1% buffer to liquidation sits behind the address self-signed "DoshiAtoll" — the same one that had a 4% buffer yesterday and added 338BTC over the week. The new 40× BTC long is self-signed "MoonpathCliff". Those are nicks, not identification.
Money by address. A whale from the registry topped up margin: over the week the Fasanara Capital address brought in $18.5M USDC in five tranches — two of $5.0M, two of $3.0M and one of $2.5M — and it's the same address building the ETH short. Another address from the players' registry, with no public label, brought in $9.5M in three tranches ($4.0M, $3.0M and $2.5M). The coin channel keeps sending BTC to Wintermute in tranches of $2.5–2.9M — five in four days now; BTC worth $3.91M came back in via Binance.
🔒THE WEEK'S DYNAMICS 🔬
Perps.BTC: net $285M short (long $144M against short $429M); over 7 days a $101M shift toward long, over the last day $29M back toward short — a turn inside the window, but the week's shift toward long is the biggest in a month. ETH: net $308M short (long $305M against $613M); $57M toward short over 7 days, $16M over the day — the pace is accelerating.
Gamma flip.BTC$69,473 — up roughly 2,500 over the week; the call wall moved up 1,000 over the week, to $81,000. ETH$2,293 — down 51, and the put wall came down 250 (what the flip is).
The price of fear. On the weekly window the premium has gone to zero: IV40.2 against realised HV 40.1, up 0.4 over 7 days. Options are no longer cheaper than the market actually moves — the rare regime of underpriced protection is over.
Calendar. The nearest expiry, 09.09, moved its max pain point by +4,500 over the week — the flow is dragging the consensus up.
Changing of the guard. Over the week the whales assembled 157 confirmed structures: 45 bullish, 36 bearish, 20 on volatility, 56 on range — against 185 yesterday: old ones roll off faster than new ones are added, the third day running. The biggest — a call diagonal on 6,000 ETH. The lean of the structures is mixed.
🔒CROSS-CHECK IN DETAIL 💠
BTC levels. Everything below comes from the Deribit options book. The market-maker break-even corridor narrowed to $78,000–$80,000 from $77,000–$81,000 yesterday — a thousand on each side; by our study across 370 expiries price stays inside such a corridor in roughly 80% of cases, but a narrower corridor is harder to hold (what the corridor is). Below, a put wall at $77,500 on 436 contracts against 285 yesterday — the floor thickened but stays flimsy. Above, a call wall at $81,000 on 17,599 contracts against 15,039 yesterday — the ceiling is forty times heavier than the floor. Max pain $79,000, unchanged (what max pain is).
ETH levels. The corridor narrowed to $2,440–$2,520 from $2,420–$2,540, max pain$2,480 unchanged. The put wall rose to $2,440 (5,351 contracts); the call wall came down to $2,500 and weighs 77,264 contracts — the densest strike in the whole ETH book, and spot sits on the strike, $6 above it.
The nearest expiry, 09.09.BTC: max pain$79,000 on the combined book of two exchanges (Deribit $79,000 · Bybit $78,750), put $77,500 on 208 contracts, call $81,000 on 4,224. ETH: max pain$2,490, put $2,440 on 3,501, call $2,500 on 1,643. Settlement at 08:00 UTC.
The quarterly, 25.09.BTC: max pain$72,000, and both put and call are densest at $70,000 (8,828 and 10,960 contracts) — this expiry holds 41% of all BTCOI. ETH: max pain$2,150, put $2,100 on 37,228, call $3,000 on 41,447.
Fuel. Above the market $45.5M of short positions in the $80,662–83,034 band against $82.4M yesterday — the short fuel compressed by almost half over the day. Below the market $32.8M of longs in the $75,126–77,498 band. In ETH the long fuel under the market is $31.4M in the $2,381–2,456 band against $127.4M yesterday — yesterday's band dispersed fourfold; above the market $25.7M of shorts. This is about the RANGE of a move for the same push, not about a higher probability of that move.
Gamma vacuum. In BTC it's dense above spot; empty only below, at $73,000–$74,000. In ETH it's empty below at $2,350–$2,400.
Stress test ±2%. At −2% ($77,183) dealers are still in positive gamma — a pullback gets damped. At +2% ($80,333) price is still under the $81,000 call wall — the ceiling holds the move.
OI flow.BTC put/call: month 0.57 · week 0.56 · now 0.54 — the book is slowly disarming against a fall (what put/call is).
Two options books.BTC put/call 0.51 on Deribit against 1.11 on Bybit; ETH0.64 against 0.77. We don't know who owns the Bybit book, so this is neither "whales" nor "retail" — just a second book with a different lean, and today it's slightly less put-heavy than yesterday.
IV by tenor.BTC 2d P36/C41 · 9d P40/C42 · 16d P39/C40, percentiles since February 50th, 51st and 48th — all three in the middle of the range. ETH 2d P45/C48 · 9d P51/C54 · 16d P51/C54, percentiles 35th, 42nd and 37th. BTCDVOL40.5 against 30-day realised 33.5 — a premium of +7.0 against +4.4 yesterday: options are getting pricier faster than spot moves (what the premium is).
💎SCENARIOS IN DETAIL 💠
The code's verdicts for yesterday. The code has no new verdicts: the set from 07.09 runs to 09:13 UTC today, the set from 08.09 stands until 10.09. The week since 01.09: 21 scenarios — 5 confirmed, 1 partially, 8 not, 4 cancelled at the boundary; only the corridor ones came through. Whole history: corridor 6 of 14 plus 2 partial, burn-up 5 of 18, slide into the long fuel 2 of 7 — the directional types run worse than a coin toss, which is why their odds sit below the corridor's.
The corridor holds — 40%. ⏱ 2 days, to 11.09. BTC stays inside the $78,000–$80,000 band. Cancellation level: a touch of $77,500.
Burn-up through the short fuel — 32%. ⏱ 2 days, to 11.09. Trigger: a touch of $80,700 — the bottom of the band holding the short positions. Cancellation level: a touch of $77,500.
Slide into the long fuel — 28%. ⏱ 2 days, to 11.09. Trigger: a touch of $77,500 — the top of the long-fuel band and the put wall. Cancellation level: a touch of $80,700.
This is how we weigh the odds — not a promise; the code will compute the verdict from spot history.
🔭WHAT TO WATCH
• The $81,000 call wall on 17,599 contracts: the book stacked 15,000 calls under it over the week — while price stays under it, the ceiling holds the move up (💠).
• The ETH call wall at $2,500 on 77,264 contracts — the densest strike in the book, with spot sitting on it; a pass through it changes the ETH terrain more than any other level (🔬).
• The 40× BTC short with a 1% buffer to liquidation at $79,539 — the first candidate for a forced closure if spot moves up (🔬).
🆓TAIL
📊POLYGON
(our own signals at real prices, not a backtest)
⚙️Pendulum · Wheel(standing position, real prices)
+$0 on the day · +$9,956 in total · since 11.05.2026
⭐ Top-5 signals($1,000 per signal; "total" is the sum of all trades, not the return on a single thousand):
signal trades win last total since
Dust Strategy V2 395%−$1,125+$90,719 21.03
Dust Strategy V1 329%−$1,125+$35,906 20.03
Volatility Convergence V3 2442%−$426+$13,706 26.05
Skew 2.0 V2 3837%+$315+$11,762 26.05
Fear Flash V2 2232%−$418+$3,023 16.05
Deepest in the red: Wheel Trail V8 −$8,429 · Wheel Trail V6 −$7,371 · Against the Current · top V1 −$5,598 — all three hunt a reversal and pay for every attempt while the trend continues; the two Wheel Trails deepened their loss by another $490 and $463 over the day. One trade closed over the day — Volatility Convergence V3 at −$426, and the signal's win rate slipped from 43% to 42%. The most profitable signal — Dust Strategy V2 — wins only 5% of its 39 trades. Win rate isn't money.
📅PUBLIC LEDGER
(computed by code at the settlement price)
The market-maker corridor. Across 370 expiries since February the market-maker break-even corridor held the settlement price 301 times — 81%. Yesterday's BTC expiry, 08.09, became one of the 69 exceptions (settlement 0.13% below the edge), the ETH expiry held; today's 09.09 expiry settles at 08:00 UTC and goes into tomorrow's ledger. Decision: we lean on the corridor, knowing that roughly one expiry in five it doesn't hold — and today's BTC corridor is half as wide as yesterday's.
Max pain. An exact match with the settlement in only 34% of those same 370 expiries. Yesterday BTC didn't match, parting from it by 2.0%; ETH matched. Decision: we don't chase max pain — it's a landmark of the niche, not a magnet.
The walls. The call wall held the settlement in 49% of expiries, the put wall in 42%: roughly a coin toss. Today's BTC ceiling is forty times heavier than the floor. Decision: a wall without an expiry and a contract count isn't a level to us; with them, it's only the place where dealer hedging brakes a move — it doesn't stop it.
Whale structures by type (our Deribit registry, 706 closed cases). Condor: 35 closed, 71% matched by strikes, yet −$115k in total. Risk reversal: 68 closed, 56% matched, −$1.84M in total. Bull call spread: 28 closed, 43% matched, +$460k in total. All closed cases together: −$5.9M for the whales. Decision: win rate isn't money, and we don't copy whale structures — we track where they stand.
Polygon. Pendulum +$9,956 since 11.05, at $0 today. The Dust Strategy: 71 trades, 7% winners, +$126,625 in total, but −$12,375 over the last 30 days — the losing streak continues. The Wheel Trail: two variants deepened their loss over the day, and it now stands at −$22.6k across 161 trades at 32% winners — the Polygon's most expensive signal, and it's still in the market. Decision: we publish both tallies daily with the same denominator; we keep the Dust for the money despite its win rate, and the Wheel Trail is the first thing we look at in every review.
📏Scale calibrator
• What protection costs. Our fear-and-greed index — 83 out of 100. We compute it from the price of volatility and the option skew on Deribit, not from news, which is why it diverges from the well-known index.
• Cheap or expensive for this market itself.BTC two-day vol — 50th percentile of the hourly history since February, nine-day — 51st, sixteen-day — 48th: right in the middle of the range, insurance costs what it usually does.
• Which way protection tilts.BTCskew is absent from today's snapshot — the source returned no number for the third day running, so we're not calibrating the tilt today. Terms: indiciadesk.com/en/glossary/
Not investment advice and not a recommendation to trade. Derivatives trading carries a high risk of loss; INDICIA DESK is a research publisher, not an adviser licensed by MAS, the SEC or the FCA — decisions and their consequences are yours.