A record tilt looks like convictionthe asymmetry is that it was built by longs walking out, not by anyone adding short.
Case #20260918 · 18.09.2026 00:00 UTC · BTC$76,366 / ETH$2,446 · analysis: Opus 5 by Anthropic
Night snapshot: today's expiry hasn't settled yet, and the fund data is Wednesday's.
📅YESTERDAY
Thursday's 17.09 expiry settled at 08:00 UTC. BTC settled 0.8% from max pain, ETH0.7% — both inside tolerance, and the market-maker break-even corridor held in both assets. After Wednesday's break in ether the corridor is holding again.
Over the day the registry recounted old cases: the ones closed with a score went from 723 to 725. Today's expiry touches nine cases — six open ones have a leg settling today, and three more the code closed in advance, with their score added after 08:00.
⚡THE GIST
• The whales didn't add short — they cut long: over the day the long side of the top Hyperliquid whales shrank by a third in BTC and by a fifth in ETH, and the BTC short-to-long tilt jumped to 4.6 times from 3.3.
• Insurance fell to its cheapest since February: BTC two-day vol sits in the 4th percentile of its own history, the 21-day in the 3rd, and the premium over the market's actual movement on the monthly window vanished outright.
• The extra paid for downside protection evaporated within a day: BTCskew0.0 against +2.1 yesterday — the market no longer pays up for puts.
• On Deribit blocks in BTC two similar aggressively bullish structures of 1,000 contracts each went through — sold puts financing bought calls.
• Verdict — continuation ⟳: the whales' tilt is the widest of the week, but it is held up by longs leaving rather than by new short, and the options side pulls the other way.
• 📊 Our Polygon — Pendulum: standing position, $0 on the day, +$9,642 in total since 11.05.
• 📊 Our Polygon — signals: best — Dust Strategy V2 +$88,469 at a 5% win rate · worst — Wheel Trail V8 −$8,787. Table at the bottom.
🐋WHALES: WHAT CHANGED — three arenas
Arena one — Hyperliquid futures. The tilt is growing from the side you would not expect. In BTC the short side shrank by a tenth over the day while the long side shrank by a third, so the ratio rose to 4.6 times (how we track whale positions). ETH did the same: the short barely moved, the long shrank by a fifth, and the tilt went to 2.9 times from 2.4. Inside the day the BTC long fell evenly, with no spike: from $151M in the morning to $99M by midnight. That is an exit, not a cascade — not one forced closure among the top whales over the day. Overleveraged whales number 64 against 59 yesterday, but longs are now exactly half of them against 58%.
Arena two — Deribit options. Two separate whale positions, and today they pull in different directions. The first — quiet accumulation in small lots outside the blocks. In BTC the week's two biggest footprints are calls, above the market, the third a put — and almost all of it sits in today's expiry. In ETH all three of the biggest footprints are calls. The second — block trades (what a block is). Over two days the snapshot recognised 44 structures in BTC and 21 in ETH. The most visible: two similar aggressively bullish positions of 1,000 contracts each — the whale sells puts below the market and buys calls above it with the proceeds. Alongside them a mirror-image bearish structure of 1,000 contracts went through in ether.
Arena three — money at the exchange border. Coins have been leaving the exchange for a third day. In 24 hours the biggest tranche was $5.6M of BTC to a market maker's address. The "bridge" channel is USDC cash: over seven days $42.6M came in against $10.7M out — four times more inflow. The "Unit" channel is coins: over the week $42.1M of BTC went out against $25.9M brought in, and over the day that weekly outflow grew by a quarter. Border snapshot 17.09, 23:25 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. Thursday's numbers haven't been published yet: the latest figures are Wednesday's, 16.09, when $296M left the BTC funds and $224M the ETH funds. The week to 16.09 stays negative in both: −$882M in BTC against +$840M the week before; in ETH−$58M against +$130M. This camp is silent: no fresh confirmation arrives before this evening, and Wednesday's picture — selling of both coins — is two days older than today's snapshot.
What the options market says. This camp measures one thing: what insurance costs on Deribit. BTCskew0.0 against +2.1 yesterday: the extra paid for downside protection disappeared within a day, and puts and calls now cost the same (what skew is). Insurance itself is on the floor: BTC two-day vol sits in the 4th percentile of its own hourly history since February, the 21-day in the 3rd; it was cheaper in fewer than three hours out of a hundred (what implied vol is). Our fear-and-greed index stands at 91 out of 100 against 82 in yesterday's morning snapshot, and the greed here comes from quiet, not from a run-up. This contradicts the whales: the whales hold the widest short tilt of the week, while over the same day the options market stopped paying for downside protection altogether.
What the futures say. This camp measures who pays whom to hold a position. BTC funding on Hyperliquid is +0.008% in eight-hour terms and ETH+0.006% — longs pay shorts in both assets, as they did yesterday (what funding is). This contradicts the whales: those still holding a leveraged long keep paying for it, so demand for the long side did not leave together with the whales' longs.
What the crowd is doing. This camp measures how retail accounts stand against the whales. On Bybit perps 59% of BTC accounts stand long and 68% of ETH accounts, both two points fewer than yesterday: retail trimmed longs a little too, but stayed on its own side. The gap between the crowd and the whales in BTC is 36.7 points — in the 100th percentile of the month; in ETH41.5 points, and over three days it moved enough to count as an event. This confirms the whales: both gaps sit in the upper part of the monthly range at once, and they widened precisely because the whales walked out of their longs and retail did not.
Any signs of stress. This camp measures whether anyone has already been forced out of the market. Among the top Hyperliquid whales, not one forced closure over the day, though one of the overleveraged sits close to a margin call. On OKX swaps $1.5M was liquidated, almost all of it shorts — 12% of the week's volume. This camp is silent: the whales left their longs of their own accord, with no cascade at all.
Again: this is positioning, not a direction forecast.
🌡ALTSEASON — the classic and our barometer
The classic altseason index stands at 34.1 out of 100 against 29.7 yesterday — still bitcoin-season territory, but the highest in four days.
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 42.9% — $4.63B of $10.80B, the largest of the week.
Alt contracts with funding hotter than bitcoin's make up 82% of open interest against 47% yesterday — the bar here is BTC's own funding, and it came down overnight.
Retail in the top-10 coins stands 64.9% long, the least of the week; the hottest are XRP and DOGE.
Whales in alts are structurally short: 35.0% long across $1.26B of positions, the biggest of them HYPE. That gap itself 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 whales' short tilt has grown for a third day and reached the widest value of the week, yet it is held up not by new short but by longs leaving: in BTC the long side shrank by a third over the day. Witnesses: the crowd, at a double monthly high of separation, backs the whales; the options market and funding go against them; the funds and stress are silent.
What this does NOT mean. It isn't a claim that BTC will go down. A position both sides are walking out of, together with the cheapest insurance since February, looks more like a market without participants than a market with a view. Today's 08:00 UTC settlement and Thursday's fund data this evening will test whether any of that shifts.
🔒In today's full RADAR:
— how the whales' long side disappeared over the day: who cut, by how much, and what is left on the accounts;
— nine cases touched by today's expiry, two of them already in the money against the whale — exactly what he loses or takes at 08:00.
ANALYST access → indiciadesk.com/en/agent
💎DEEP
🔒WHALES IN DETAIL 💠
Portraits from the Hyperliquid registry, snapshot 22:46 UTC. Nicknames aren't treated as identification.
The market's biggest loss.ETH SHORT $251.7M, leverage 5×, entry $2,297, uPnL −$15.3M against −$14.0M yesterday, liquidation at $3,498 — 43% above spot. The position grew by $3M over the day. The same address in BTC. SHORT $161.2M, leverage 5×, entry $72,731, uPnL −$7.7M, liquidation at $128,127 (+68%) — a third day running this address adds to the bitcoin short, up $2M over the day. A second address with the same pattern.ETH SHORT $175.6M and BTC SHORT $104.2M, both at 5× leverage, uPnL −$9.9M and −$6.9M, liquidations at $3,521 and $133,822 on an account of $82.5M. The ETH short grew $5M over the day. Together the two addresses carry $39.8M of unrealised loss against $37.9M yesterday. The short at the edge survived and shrank.BTC SHORT $33.7M at 40× leverage, entry $76,011, uPnL −$164k, liquidation at $78,019 — 2% above spot, account $1.2M. Over the day the position was cut by $10M, and the buffer to a forced closure grew from 0.7% to 2%. The 10× short is standing still.BTC SHORT $61.7M, entry $76,635, uPnL +$203k, liquidation at $89,055 (+17%), account $12.2M — unchanged over the day, self-labelled. The ether longs are holding.ETH LONG $74.1M at 20× from $2,134, uPnL +$9.4M; ETH LONG $48.9M at 4× from $1,936, uPnL +$10.2M — the market's biggest gain for a seventh day running. The risky ether long was built up.ETH LONG $37.9M at 25× leverage, entry $2,452, uPnL −$101k, liquidation at $2,424 — only 1% below spot, account $1.1M. 5,500 ETH were added over the day. A third big ether short.ETH SHORT $33.7M at 25× leverage, entry $2,300, uPnL −$2.0M, liquidation at $4,340 (+77%), account $32.1M. Two new high-leverage BTC longs. LONG $20.2M at 21× from $77,235 with liquidation at $73,642 (−4%) and LONG $17.8M at 40× from $77,888 with liquidation at $66,138 — a distance like that at that leverage is only possible on cross margin; both in the red by $226k and $350k, both without a public label.
Cases in the registry — none new over the day; today's expiry touches nine: six open ones with a leg settling today plus three the registry closed in advance. Case #1087 · ETH put diagonal: 200 puts at $2,450 sold for Friday 27.11.2026, 200 puts at $2,550 bought for Friday 18.09.2026 — 400 contracts, entered at $2,432, second day. Net premium about 8.38ETH received (≈$20k). The bought leg is $104 per contract in the money today, the sold far leg stays in play.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-09-18. Кит отримав $20k премії. Беззбитковості в показаному діапазоні немає.
Case #1090 · BTC put diagonal: 25 puts at $78,000 sold for Friday 18.09.2026, 25 puts at $80,000 bought for Friday 25.09.2026 — 50 contracts, entered at $76,384, second day. Net premium about 0.72BTC paid (≈$55k). The sold leg is $1,634 per contract in the money — and that is the leg the whale closes today.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-09-18. Кит заплатив $55k премії. Беззбитковості в показаному діапазоні немає.
Case #1074 · BTC bear call spread: 250 calls at $81,000 sold, 250 calls at $83,000 bought, expiry today — 500 contracts, entered at $77,788. Net premium about 0.58BTC received (≈$45k): spot sits 6% below the sold strike, so both legs burn out and the premium stays with the whale. The registry has already closed the case; the score gets added after settlement.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-09-18. Кит отримав $45k премії. Беззбитковість: $81 179.
Case #1085 · ETH bull call spread to March: 1,645 calls at $2,800 bought, 1,645 calls at $4,000 sold, expiry Friday 26.03.2027 — 3,290 contracts, entered at $2,432, second day. Net premium about 129.0ETH paid (≈$314k). Yesterday the very same structure was repeated once more in the blocks.
Case #1080 · BTC risk reversal: 100 calls at $70,000 sold and 100 puts at $70,000 bought, expiry Friday 30.10.2026 — a synthetic short from $70,000, premium about 8.22BTC received (≈$624k), third day. Spot barely moved over the day.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-10-30. Кит отримав $624k премії. Беззбитковість: $76 236.
Also settling today: #1089 BTC put diagonal — its sold $77,000 leg is $634 in the money, and #1070 ETH call ratio spread, where the bought $2,550 calls and the sold $2,760 calls are all out of the money, so the whale loses the roughly 6.4ETH paid. ΔOI over the week, both ways:BTC+2,626 calls at $82,000 (86% of it in 02.10 and 25.09) and +2,144 calls at $80,000 against +2,620 puts at $74,000 (62% in today's expiry). ETH calls only: +18,229 at $2,700 (61% in today's), +17,346 at $2,500 and +17,235 at $2,800.
🔬Who exactly
Both of the biggest shorts are Abraxas Capital Mgmt (Heka Funds): over the day the firm added $5M to the ETH short and $2M to the BTC short, with margin across the two accounts at $193.3M against $192.3M yesterday. The firm's unrealised loss is $39.8M.
The third big ether short is Fasanara Capital: $33.7M at 25× leverage, no material change over the day, account $32.1M.
The risky 25× ether long, built up by 5,500 ETH over the day, belongs to Machi Big Brother: an account of $1.1M under a position of $37.9M, with liquidation a percent away from the price.
The 10× BTC short is self-labelled VBVIT; nicknames aren't treated as identification.
The 40× short at the edge, both of the market's biggest gains and the two new BTC longs are addresses without a public label.
Money by address. The day's biggest tranche — $5.6M of BTC to a Wintermute address; over the week the coin channel sent $38.2M of BTC there and to other players. Coming back through Binance over the day was only $0.7M of ZEC.
🔒THE WEEK'S DYNAMICS 🔬
Perps.BTC: net $359M short (long $99M against short $458M), $28M toward short over the day. ETH: net $414M short (long $216M against $630M), $70M over the day. The weekly window does not work here: a week ago the longs were three times bigger, so it prints $357M and $416M — a change of base, not a daily flow.
Gamma flip.BTC$74,874 — up 791 over the day and 3,689 over the week, with spot only 2% above it (what the flip is). ETH$2,371 — spot 3% above it.
The price of fear. On the weekly window the premium is minus 9.0 (IV33.3 against realised HV42.3) — the deepest minus of the week, 8.0 deeper over 7 days. The market really does travel further than options price in, and the gap keeps widening.
Changing of the guard. Over the week the whales assembled 170 confirmed structures: 46 bullish, 53 bearish, 20 on volatility, 51 on range — a second day with more bearish than bullish.
🔒CROSS-CHECK IN DETAIL 💠
BTC levels. Everything below comes from Deribit options open interest. The market-maker break-even corridor is $76,000–$79,000 against $75,500–$77,500 yesterday — it moved up, and spot stands at its very bottom; by our study across 388 expiries price stays inside such a corridor in roughly 82% of cases (what the corridor is). Max pain on the combined two-exchange book $77,000, on Deribit alone $77,500 (what max pain is).
Today, Friday 18.09.BTC: 22,573 contracts, max pain$77,000, put wall $74,000 on 3,035 contracts, call wall $79,000 on 1,870 (what the walls are). ETH: 147,274 contracts — the week's heaviest expiry; max pain$2,475, put wall $2,250 on 7,361, call wall $2,800 on 23,429.
Tomorrow, Saturday 19.09. The expiries are thin: BTC 3,535 contracts, ETH 19,136 — after today's settlement the weekend is left almost empty.
ETH levels. The corridor is $2,420–$2,540 against $2,380–$2,480 yesterday — it moved up behind spot, max pain$2,500.
The quarterly, Friday 25.09.BTC: max pain$72,000, put and call densest at $70,000 (9,413 and 10,942). ETH: max pain$2,200, put $2,100 on 36,937, call $3,000 on 42,409.
Fuel. Above BTC$56.2M of short positions in the $77,911–80,202 band against $42.8M of longs below the market in the $72,564–74,855 band — the ratio evened out after yesterday's twofold skew. In ETH$45.9M of long fuel below the market, and no short fuel above it at all. 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 below, at $71,000–$72,000. In ETH dense above spot.
Stress test ±2%. For BTC and ETH, a 2% move from spot either way leaves the dealers in positive gamma — the move gets damped.
OI flow.BTC put/call across all expiries: month 0.56 · week 0.55 · now 0.56 — stable; ETH0.50 · 0.54 · 0.51 (what put/call is).
Two options venues. On the same expiries up to 30 days BTC put/call is 0.56 on Deribit against 1.06 on Bybit; ETH0.56 against 0.91 — over the day both Bybit ratios turned more put-heavy. 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 P22/C22 · 7d P30/C29 · 21d P33/C31, percentiles since February 4th, 6th and 3rd against 27th, 9th and 16th yesterday. ETH 2d P32/C31 · 7d P44/C43 · 21d P48/C48, percentiles 6th, 11th and 11th. BTCDVOL33.6 against 30-day realised 33.6 — the premium vanished entirely; ETHDVOL50.1 against HV 50.2, a minus for the first time this week (what the premium is).
💎SCENARIOS IN DETAIL 💠
The code's verdicts for yesterday. There are no new verdicts: the three scenarios from 16.09 reach their horizon today at 07:39 UTC, the three from 17.09 stand until tomorrow. The week since 11.09: 21 scenarios — 4 confirmed, 3 partially, 3 not, 5 cancelled at their cancellation levels, 6 still running. All-time: corridor 8 of 23 plus 6 partial, squeeze-up 7 of 27, slide into the long fuel 5 of 16 — the directional types do worse than a coin toss, the corridor type comes in under half.
The corridor holds — 45%. ⏱ 2 days, to Sunday 20.09. BTC stays between the fuel bands, $74,850–$77,900. Cancellation level: a touch of $72,600 — the bottom of the long-fuel band.
Squeeze up through the short fuel — 30%. ⏱ 2 days, to Sunday 20.09. Trigger: a touch of $77,900 — the bottom of the band of short positions. Cancellation level: a touch of $74,850.
Slide into the long fuel — 25%. ⏱ 2 days, to Sunday 20.09. Trigger: a touch of $74,850 — the top of the band of long positions. Cancellation level: a touch of $77,900.
This is how we weigh the odds — not a promise; the code will compute the verdict from spot history.
🔭WHAT TO WATCH
• Today, 08:00 UTC: the week's heaviest ether expiry — 147,274 contracts, with max pain a percent above spot; the legs of nine whale cases settle with it (💠).
• BTC two-day vol in the 4th percentile with the premium over actual movement at exactly zero: protection costs the same as the distance the market really travels (💠).
• The whales' BTC long side at $99M: if the exit continues, the tilt could become the widest in a month without a single new short position (🔬).
🆓TAIL
📊POLYGON
(our own signals at real prices, not a backtest)
⚙️Pendulum · Wheel(standing position, real prices)
+$0 on the day · +$9,642 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 2941%−$174+$13,199 26.05
Skew 2.0 V2 4137%−$775+$10,606 26.05
Fear Flash V2 2232%−$418+$3,023 16.05
Deepest in the red: Wheel Trail V8 −$8,787 · Wheel Trail V6 −$7,718 · Wheel Trail V7 −$6,179 — three variants of one signal that hunts a reversal and pays for every attempt while the trend runs. One trade closed in the top five over the day: Skew 2.0 V2 came out $775 down, and its win rate slipped to 37%. 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 388 expiries since February the market-maker break-even corridor held the settlement price 318 times — 82%. Thursday's 17.09 expiry held in both assets — the day after ether stepped out of the corridor. 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 36% of those same 388 expiries. Yesterday both assets converged inside tolerance: BTC by 0.8%, ETH by 0.7%. Decision: we don't chase max pain — even two convergences in a row don't turn it into a magnet.
The walls. The call wall held the settlement in 50% of expiries, the put wall in 41%: roughly a coin toss. Today's ether expiry carries 147,274 contracts, and its densest level is a call wall 14% above the price. Decision: a wall without an expiry and a contract count isn't published.
Whale structures by type (our Deribit registry, 725 closed cases). Put diagonal — the type of two of the cases settling today: 71 closed, +$2.25M in total for the whales, the most profitable type in the registry. Bear call spread — the type of the third: 60 closed, only 20% of them came in by strikes, −$891k in total. Risk reversal — the type of the day's two bullish blocks: 68 closed, 56% came in, −$1.84M in total. All closed cases together: −$5.81M. Decision: win rate isn't money, and we don't copy whale structures — we track where they stand.
Polygon. Pendulum +$9,642 since 11.05 with $0 on the day. The Dust Strategy: 75 trades across both versions and +$122k together, a sixth day without new trades. Skew 2.0: the day's only closed trade, and it closed at a loss. Decision: we publish both tallies daily with the same denominator; we keep the Dust Strategy for the money it makes 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 — 91 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 — 4th percentile of the hourly history since February, weekly — 6th, 21-day — 3rd: it was cheaper in fewer than three hours out of a hundred.
• Which way protection tilts.BTCskew0.0: puts and calls cost the same, there is no tilt left at all — yesterday it stood at +2.1 on the put side. 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.