Everyone will see a whale short that finally heldthe asymmetry is that on a Sunday where BTC moved 0.57% the snapshot measures nobody acting, and the witnesses split down the middle the moment the whales stopped flipping.
Case #20260913 · 13.09.2026 04:48 UTC · BTC$77,198 / ETH$2,519 · analysis: Fable 5.1 by Anthropic
📅YESTERDAY
The Saturday 12.09 expiry settled at 08:00 UTC. BTC settled 0.9% from max pain — a match within tolerance, and the market-maker break-even corridor held. ETH settled 1.7% away from max pain — no match, but the corridor held there too.
The corridor has held in both assets for a fourth day running. No whale case closed over the day, and the snapshot didn't recognise any new ones — the second day in a row.
⚡THE GIST
• The quietest day in half a year but one: BTC covered a band 0.57% wide in 24 hours — the only narrower day was 16.08, also a Sunday.
• The run of flips is over: the short-over-long tilt of the top Hyperliquid whales in BTC stands at 2.6 times, the same as yesterday — both sides added only a little.
• The lenses parted: the perps turned neutral on a day with no movement, the Deribit options market in BTC still leans toward a fall, and in ETH both are neutral.
• The options market gets greedier from stillness: our fear-and-greed index rose to 89 out of 100, and BTC two-day vol lifted off the floor — the 17th percentile against the 3rd yesterday.
• Verdict — continuation ⟳: the whale short stands, but on a Sunday without the funds and without a price move this measures the absence of action, not fresh conviction.
• 📊 Our Polygon — Pendulum: standing position, $0 on the day, +$9,956 in total since 11.05.
• 📊 Our Polygon — signals: best — Dust Strategy V2 +$88,469 at a 5% win rate · worst — Wheel Trail V8 −$8,578. Table at the bottom.
🐋WHALES: WHAT CHANGED — three arenas
Arena one — Hyperliquid futures. After three flips in three days — a day when the construct held. In BTC both sides of the top whales grew by a few percent over the day, and the short-over-long tilt stayed at 2.6 times. Within the day it swung between 2.3 and 2.7 and came back to where it started. In ETH the positions barely moved; the tilt is the same as yesterday (how we track whale positions). Overleveraged whales under watch: 52 against 50 yesterday, but the share of longs among them fell to 59% from two thirds. Not a single forced closure among the top whales over the day.
Arena two — Deribit options. Two separate whale positions, and today they look in different directions. The first — quiet accumulation in small lots outside the blocks. After Saturday's settlement, of the week's three biggest footprints in BTC two are puts, under the market, and one is calls, spread across nine expiries. In ETH the reverse: two of the three biggest footprints are now calls, above the market, against one yesterday. The second — block trades (what a block is). Over two days the snapshot recognised 5 structures in BTC against 11 yesterday, and the most visible one repeated four times — a call spread that gains on a rise up to its ceiling, not beyond. In ETH4 structures against one: yesterday's strangle — a position on a big move in either direction — was doubled, and next to it went a bearish position with protection against a fall paid for with a ceiling. No new cases in the registry; the open ones are in the paid part.
Arena three — money at the exchange border. The border nearly froze over the day. In 24 hours only three small tranches crossed it, all withdrawals of coins through the "Unit" channel — about $1.3M together. The "bridge" channel is USDC cash: over seven days $55.2M came in and $10.4M went out — cash inflow five times the outflow. Where the withdrawals go: 27% of everything withdrawn went to exchange addresses against 32% yesterday — the first decline after three days of growth. Border snapshot 13.09, 04:48 UTC.
This is positioning, not a direction forecast.
🧭CROSS-CHECK — five camps of witnesses
Witnesses are independent data sources that back up or contradict the whales' positions.
What the funds are doing. Spot ETFs are the only camp that measures purchases of the coin itself, not a leveraged position. The funds don't trade at weekends: there's no new data, and the last trading day is Friday 11.09. The week to 11.09 in the BTC funds is negative: −$288M against +$610M the week before. Into the ETH funds that Friday went $216M — the biggest daily inflow of the month; the week came to $224M against $294M the week before. This camp is silent: there'll be no fresh signal before Monday, and Friday's picture is the same — selling bitcoin, buying ether.
What the options market says. This camp measures one thing: what insurance costs on Deribit. Our fear-and-greed index stands at 89 out of 100 against 83 yesterday — extreme greed, and again it comes from stillness. BTC two-day vol lifted off the floor: the 17th percentile of its own hourly history since February against the 3rd yesterday — insurance got a little dearer, but it's still cheaper than in most hours (what implied vol is). BTCskew+0.8 against +1.1 yesterday — the extra paid for puts is melting for a second day; ETHskew−0.4, meaning calls are already dearer than puts (what skew is). This contradicts the whales: the whales hold the short while the options market pays less and less for protection against a fall — and in ether already less than for a rise.
What the futures say. This camp measures who pays whom to hold a position. BTC funding on Hyperliquid is +0.010% in eight-hour terms against +0.005% yesterday — longs are again paying shorts twice as much (what funding is). The BTC futures basis is back in the plus after yesterday's zero. This contradicts the whales: on the perps the demand for longs grows exactly while the whales hold the short.
What the crowd is doing. This camp measures how retail accounts stand against the whales. On Bybit perps 61% of BTC accounts stand long, ETH68% — a point more than yesterday. The gap between the crowd and the whales in BTC is 32.1 points, the same as yesterday — still the monthly maximum, though the percentile slipped to the 93rd. This confirms the whales: retail and the whales stand on opposite sides as far apart as yesterday, and nobody gave ground.
Any signs of stress. This camp measures whether anyone has already been forced out of the market. Among the top Hyperliquid whales, no forced closure over the day against one of $3.9M yesterday. On OKX swaps the day's liquidations came to a handful of dollars against $5.5M the day before. This camp is silent: in a market that moved half a percent in a day there was nobody to knock out.
Again: this is positioning, not a direction forecast.
🌡ALTSEASON — the classic and our barometer
The classic altseason index stands at 40.1 out of 100 against 32.2 yesterday — still bitcoin-season territory, but the highest value of the week.
Our barometer watches money, not prices: open interest, funding and retail come from Bybit perps, the whales from the Hyperliquid registry. Alts' share of open interest is 41.4% — $4.27B of $10.32B.
Alt contracts with funding hotter than bitcoin's make up only 1.9% of open interest — over the week this share ranged from 35% to 79%: the bar here is BTC's own funding, and a collapse like this says first of all that bitcoin's own funding got dearer.
Retail in the top-10 coins stands 69.9% long; the hottest are XRP and DOGE, both near 78%.
Whales in alts are structurally short: 35.3% long across $1.13B of positions, the biggest of them 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 ⟳ — for the first time in four days the whale tilt didn't flip: the BTC short stands at 2.6 times. But the lenses no longer agree as they did yesterday, and the witnesses split: the crowd at the monthly maximum of the gap stands with the whales; cheaper protection against a fall, doubled funding paid by longs and call footprints in ETH stand against; the funds and stress are silent.
What this does NOT mean. It isn't a claim that BTC goes down, and it isn't a sign that the whales' thesis got stronger. A Sunday without the funds and with a half-percent move in price measures that nobody acted — the test of the whale short begins when the volumes come back.
🔒In today's full RADAR:
— a large fund from the registry cut its ether short over the day and lost a third of the margin on its account — its liquidation moved closer, and who it is;
— five whale cases with expiries from Monday to the end of September — one of them already fully inside the deepest-loss zone of its payoff profile.
ANALYST access → indiciadesk.com/en/agent
💎DEEP
🔒WHALES IN DETAIL 💠
Portraits from the Hyperliquid registry, snapshot 04:16 UTC. Nicknames aren't treated as identification.
The market's biggest loss.ETH SHORT $243.9M, leverage 5×, entry $2,270, uPnL −$24.3M, liquidation at $3,548 — 41% above spot. Account $106.8M. Over the day the position grew by $1M, and the loss deepened by $1M along with spot ether. The same address in BTC. SHORT $152.4M, leverage 5×, entry $72,307, uPnL −$9.6M, liquidation at $127,894 (+66%) — $3M smaller over the day. A second address with the same pattern.ETH SHORT $155.1M and BTC SHORT $73.2M, both at 5× leverage, uPnL −$15.9M and −$8.2M, liquidations at $3,580 and $147,243 on a $67.0M account. The ETH short is unchanged over the day after yesterday's $45M build; the BTC short was cut by $6M. Together the two addresses carry $58.0M of unrealised loss against $57.4M yesterday. The third big short — shrank together with its margin.ETH SHORT $53.7M at 15× leverage, entry $2,253, uPnL −$5.7M. Over the day the position was cut by $5M, and the account thinned from $31.7M to $21.9M — the liquidation moved in to $3,343, 33% above spot against 46% yesterday. No large withdrawals across the exchange border from this address over the day. The market's two biggest gains — almost equal.ETH LONG $76.4M at 20× leverage, entry $2,134, uPnL +$11.7M, liquidation at $1,758 (−30%), account $7.8M — held for at least a week. Next to it ETH LONG $50.4M at 4× from $1,936 with the same +$11.7M; this address still holds a BTC SHORT of $48.7M at 4×, entry $77,713, already +$328k — a position on the ratio of the two coins, standing unchanged for a second day. The risky side — both assets in one pair of hands.ETH LONG $98.7M at 25× with liquidation at $2,432 — 4% under spot, and BTC LONG $42.8M at 40× with liquidation at $70,897 (−8%). Account $6.8M against $6.3M yesterday — margin was added. The week's biggest new short stands.BTC SHORT $83.0M at 20× leverage, entry $77,908, uPnL +$770k, liquidation at $86,693 (+12%), account $9.5M — after yesterday's doubling, another $1M added over the day. No public label. The long on the highest leverage.BTC LONG $31.4M at 40×, entry $78,023, uPnL −$338k, liquidation at $73,945 — 4% under spot, account $1.7M. No public label.
Cases in the registry — no new ones over the day, none closed, all from Deribit. Case #1067 · BTC put diagonal: 25 puts at $74,000 bought for 25.09.2026, 25 puts at $76,000 sold for 14.09.2026 — 50 contracts, entered at $76,840, third day in play. Net premium about 0.16BTC paid (≈$12k). The sold leg settles tomorrow, Monday; spot is 1.6% above its strike.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-09-14. Кит заплатив $12k премії. Беззбитковості в показаному діапазоні немає.
Case #1068 · BTC call diagonal: 25 calls at $77,500 sold for 14.09.2026, 25 calls at $78,000 bought for 25.09.2026 — 50 contracts, entered at $76,840, third day. Net premium about 0.35BTC paid (≈$27k). The sold leg also settles on Monday — spot is 0.4% under its strike, where yesterday it stood above it.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-09-14. Кит заплатив $27k 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, sixth day in play. Net premium about 0.70BTC received (≈$55k): the whale collects the premium for price not leaving $72,000–$86,000 by Friday 18.09; spot is 7% from the lower edge.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-09-18. Кит отримав $55k премії. Беззбитковість: $71 452 і $86 548.
Case #1049 · BTC bull put spread: 190 puts at $78,000 bought, 190 puts at $80,000 sold, expiry 25.09.2026 — 380 contracts, entered at $79,436, seventh day in play. Net premium about 2.36BTC received (≈$187k). Spot is already under both strikes — in the zone where this case's payoff profile is at its deepest; twelve days to settlement.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-09-25. Кит отримав $187k премії. Беззбитковість: $79 015.
Case #948 · ETH condor at $1,700/$1,900/$2,800/$3,000, size 11,500, entered at $2,462, expiry 25.09.2026 — nineteenth 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.
Still in play: #1063 BTC put diagonal for 30.10 and 27.11 (fourth day), #1061 and #1065 BTC call ratio spreads, #546ETH strangle at $1,000/$4,000 to 25.06.2027 (seventieth day). ΔOI over the week, both ways:BTC+2,061 puts at $72,000 (80% in the 18.09 and 25.09 expiries), +2,004 puts at $74,000 (61% in 18.09) against +1,764 calls at $81,000 across nine expiries. ETH: +16,400 calls at $2,600 and +14,887 calls at $2,700 (61% in 18.09) against +12,791 puts at $2,300.
🔬Who exactly
Both of the biggest shorts are Abraxas Capital Mgmt (Heka Funds): two addresses of one house, ETH and BTC on each. After yesterday's $57M build of the ETH short the house left it alone over the day, and cut the BTC short on both addresses by $9M together. Together $58.0M of unrealised loss.
The third big ETH short is Fasanara Capital: over the day it cut the position by $5M to $53.7M, and the margin on the account fell by $9.8M. By the exchange-border registry this address deposited $30.6M of USDC over seven days and didn't withdraw a single tranche above $250k over the day — where the margin went, the data doesn't show.
The 25× ETH long and the 40× BTC long are both Machi Big Brother: $141M together on a $6.8M account, margin lifted by $0.5M over the day.
The market's two biggest gains, the new 20× BTC short and the 40× BTC long belong to addresses without a public label; no nicknames either.
Money by address. Over the day ETH worth $0.71M and SOL worth $0.28M crossed the border out — both tranches to Wintermute, plus ZEC worth $0.35M to a private address. Over the week the coin channel handed BTC to Wintermute in $3.0–4.3M tranches, and BTC worth $7.4M came back in via Binance in two tranches. The week's biggest exchange-bound cash withdrawal — $3.5M USDC to a Binance deposit address — remains the only one.
🔒THE WEEK'S DYNAMICS 🔬
Perps.BTC: net $316M short (long $202M against short $518M); the weekly shift is only $6M toward short, $8M of it in the last day: the tilt isn't new, it's been held all week. ETH: net $274M short (long $324M against $598M); $32M toward long over 7 days, practically zero over the day.
Gamma flip.BTC$70,782 — up 2,428 over the week, 270 over the day; the call wall and the put wall each came down 2,000 over the week. ETH$2,307 — almost flat over the week (+22), but down 112 over the day from yesterday's $2,419 (what the flip is).
The price of fear. On the weekly window the premium is still negative: IV37.1 against realised HV41.1 — minus 4.0 against minus 4.6 yesterday, compressed by 3.2 over 7 days. The week's range hasn't yet dropped out of the calculation, so the options market is still cheaper than the actual movement.
Changing of the guard. Over the week the whales assembled 172 confirmed structures: 45 bullish, 36 bearish, 23 on volatility, 68 on range — against 115 yesterday. The biggest — a bull put spread on 4,000 ETH. The lean is mixed: more bullish ones, but the 45-to-36 edge is smaller than yesterday.
🔒CROSS-CHECK IN DETAIL 💠
BTC levels. Everything below comes from Deribit options open interest. The market-maker break-even corridor is $77,000–$78,500 against $77,000–$79,000 yesterday — narrower still, with spot $200 above its bottom; by our study across 378 expiries price stays inside such a corridor in roughly 82% of cases (what the corridor is). Max pain $77,500 against $78,000 (what max pain is). Today's Sunday expiry is thin — 2,773 contracts, so its walls at $70,000 and $82,000 hold little.
The real landmark of the week — Friday 18.09.BTC: 17,192 contracts, max pain$78,000, put wall $72,000 on 2,419 contracts, call wall $82,000 on 1,814 (what the walls are). ETH: 92,993 contracts, max pain$2,500, put wall $2,200 on 8,018, call wall $2,800 on 22,630 — above ether the ceiling is three times heavier than the floor.
ETH levels. The corridor is $2,480–$2,580, unchanged, max pain$2,520 against $2,540. The Sunday ETH expiry is light too, and its walls sit right on spot, so we don't treat them as levels.
The quarterly, 25.09.BTC: max pain$72,000, and both put and call are densest at $70,000 (9,446 and 10,958 contracts) — this expiry holds 45% of all BTCOI against 43% yesterday, because the Saturday expiry came off. ETH: max pain$2,200, put $2,100 on 38,507, call $3,000 on 46,064.
Fuel. Below the market $50.8M of long positions in the $73,332–75,648 band against $69.7M yesterday — the long fuel is melting for a second day. Above the market $17.0M of shorts in the $78,736–81,052 band against $15.5M — almost unchanged. In ETH the long fuel under the market is $103.1M in the $2,396–2,471 band, the shorts above it $627k. This is about the RANGE of a move for the same push, not about a higher probability of that move (what the fuel map is).
Gamma vacuum. In BTC it's dense above spot; empty only below, at $72,000–$73,000. In ETH it's empty on both sides: above at $2,600–$2,650, below at $2,300–$2,350.
Stress test ±2%. At −2% ($75,647) the dealers are still in positive gamma — a pullback gets damped. At +2% ($78,735) price is still under the $80,000 call wall — the ceiling holds the move.
OI flow.BTC put/call: month 0.55 · week 0.55 · now 0.56 — stable; ETH0.52 · 0.55 · 0.55 — stable too (what put/call is).
Two options venues.BTC put/call 0.55 on Deribit against 1.03 on Bybit — after three days of slipping, Bybit's open interest is slightly more put-heavy again (1.01 yesterday); ETH0.62 against 0.79. We don't know who owns the Bybit positions, so this is neither "whales" nor "retail" — just a second venue with a different lean.
IV by tenor.BTC 2d P29/C29 · 5d P37/C37 · 19d P37/C36, percentiles since February 17th, 34th and 23rd against 3rd, 23rd and 17th yesterday — all three tenors got dearer, the near end the most. ETH 2d P40/C42 · 5d P52/C54 · 19d P52/C52, percentiles 20th, 45th and 34th — on the two near tenors calls are dearer than puts. BTCDVOL37.1 against 30-day realised 33.0 — a premium of +4.1 against +2.4 yesterday: the options get dearer while spot stands still (what the premium is).
💎SCENARIOS IN DETAIL 💠
The code's verdicts for yesterday. The code closed "Slide into the long fuel" from 10.09 — confirmed: the low of $76,561 went through the $76,750 trigger. "The corridor holds" and "Burn-up through the short fuel" from 11.09 run their course today at 05:28 UTC; the three scenarios from 12.09 stand until tomorrow. The week since 06.09: 21 scenarios — 4 confirmed, 1 partially, 6 not, 5 cancelled at the boundary, 5 in progress. Whole history: corridor 7 of 18 plus 3 partial, burn-up 5 of 22, slide into the long fuel 4 of 12 — the directional types run worse than a coin toss, the corridor type under half.
The corridor holds — 45%. ⏱ 2 days, to 15.09. BTC stays between the two fuel bands, $75,700–$78,700. Cancellation level: a touch of $73,300 — the bottom of the long-fuel band.
Slide into the long fuel — 30%. ⏱ 2 days, to 15.09. Trigger: a touch of $75,650 — the top of the band of long positions. Cancellation level: a touch of $78,750.
Burn-up through the short fuel — 25%. ⏱ 2 days, to 15.09. Trigger: a touch of $78,750 — the bottom of the band of short positions. Cancellation level: a touch of $75,650.
This is how we weigh the odds — not a promise; the code will compute the verdict from spot history.
🔭WHAT TO WATCH
• Monday 14.09, 08:00 UTC: the sold legs of cases #1067 and #1068 settle — spot stands between their strikes at $76,000 and $77,500, and if it stays there to settlement, both sold legs expire without a payout (💠).
• Fasanara Capital: −$9.8M of margin over the day on a reduced short, liquidation 33% above spot — if the margin keeps draining, the buffer will shrink faster than the position (🔬).
• The funds return on Monday: Friday gave −$13M in BTC and +$216M in ETH — the first trading day shows whether that split holds (🔬).
🆓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 415%−$1,125+$88,469 21.03
Dust Strategy V1 349%−$1,125+$33,656 20.03
Volatility Convergence V3 2744%−$261+$13,542 26.05
Skew 2.0 V2 3936%−$722+$11,040 26.05
Fear Flash V2 2232%−$418+$3,023 16.05
Deepest in the red: Wheel Trail V8 −$8,578 · Wheel Trail V6 −$7,565 · Wheel Trail V7 −$5,944 — three variants of one signal hunt a reversal and pay for every attempt while the trend continues. Not a single trade closed in the top five over the day: after yesterday's six losers the table stands line for line, because in a market that moved half a percent the signals had nothing to fire on. The most profitable signal — Dust Strategy V2 — wins only 5% of its 41 trades. Win rate isn't money.
📅PUBLIC LEDGER
(computed by code at the settlement price)
The market-maker corridor. Across 378 expiries since February the market-maker break-even corridor held the settlement price 309 times — 82%. Saturday's 12.09 expiry held in both assets — the fourth day running. Decision: we lean on the corridor, knowing that roughly one expiry in five it doesn't hold.
Max pain. An exact match with the settlement in only 35% of those same 378 expiries. Yesterday BTC matched within tolerance ($77,269 against $78,000); ETH didn't ($2,522 against $2,480, 1.7% apart — this max pain is the one the code computed at settlement, not the morning figure). 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 Sunday BTC expiry has only 2,773 contracts — walls like these we don't treat as a level at all. Decision: a wall without an expiry and a contract count isn't published as a level; 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, 721 closed cases). Bull call spread: 29 closed, 41% matched by strikes, +$419k in total — one of the few profitable types. Bear call spread: 60 closed, only 20% matched, −$891k in total. Condor: 36 closed, 69% matched, yet −$126k 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 on the day. The Dust Strategy: 75 trades across both versions and +$122k together, even though yesterday each version closed two trades in the red for $4,500 combined, and today neither traded. The Wheel Trail: three variants in the bottom three. 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 — 89 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 — 17th percentile of the hourly history since February, five-day — 34th, nineteen-day — 23rd: all three are cheaper than in most hours, but the near end has lifted off the floor.
• Which way protection tilts.BTCskew+0.8: puts are still dearer than calls — the market pays extra for protection against a fall — but less than yesterday (+1.1), and less for a second day running. 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.