A 6% rally is supposed to flush shorts outthe asymmetry is that the whales used it to add more.
Case #20260919 · 19.09.2026 05:20 UTC · BTC$81,065 / ETH$2,626 · analysis: Opus 5 by Anthropic
📅YESTERDAY
Friday's 18.09 expiry settled at 08:00 UTC. BTC settled 0.3% from max pain, ETH0.4% — both inside tolerance, and the market-maker break-even corridor held in both assets, on the week's heaviest ether expiry. The surge started only after settlement.
Case registry: 725 closed with a score, same as yesterday. The code closed three cases expiring 18.09 but hasn't entered their sums yet; by our own count from the settlement price, two of them ended in the whale's favour and one against.
⚡THE GIST
• The rally didn't knock the whales out of their short: BTC gained 6.2% over the day, and the net short of the top Hyperliquid whales in BTC grew from $359M to $423M — more short was added than long.
• The long side came back, but the tilt stayed: the whales' BTC long side grew 2.4 times, to $238M, and the short-to-long ratio fell from 4.6 to 2.8 times.
• The funds bought two days in a row: BTC ETFs +$159M on Thursday and +$433M on Friday; ETH ETFs +$144M on Friday after three days of outflows.
• The crowd didn't chase the rally: the share of long accounts on Bybit BTC perps fell from 59% to 52%.
• Verdict — continuation ⟳: the whales didn't just sit through the surge, they sold short into it, even though the funds, funding and liquidations all point against them.
• 📊 Our Polygon — Pendulum: standing position, $0 on the day, +$9,642 in total since 11.05.
• 📊 Our Polygon — signals: best — Dust Strategy V2 +$86,219 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 whales added on both sides, but more on the short one. In BTC the long side grew over the day from $99M to $238M, the short side from $458M to $661M. Roughly $28M of that short came from price alone, the rest from new coins. The net short grew by $64M (how we track whale positions). In ETH both sides grew by almost the same amount, about $135M each: the net short stays at $411M, as yesterday, while the tilt fell from 2.9 to 2.2 times. The main surge came on Friday afternoon, and most of the new positions appeared in those four hours — on both sides. Overleveraged whales number 59 against 64 yesterday, with longs at 55% of them against half.
Arena two — Deribit options. Two layers of positions — and they pull in different directions. The first — quiet accumulation in small lots outside the blocks. In BTC all three of the week's biggest footprints are calls, above the market. In ETH two of the three are calls, the third a put below the market. The second — block trades (what a block is). Over two days the snapshot recognised 84 structures in BTC and 40 in ETH — twice as many as the day before. The biggest in BTC protect against a fall or earn if the fall doesn't come. In ETH the day's biggest block is positioned for a moderate rise, capped if the move turns too strong. The registry took in three new whale cases.
Arena three — money at the exchange border. Coins left the exchange all week, but there are no fresh entries. Over seven days the "Unit" channel took $60.8M of BTC out against $26.5M brought in, while $52.0M of USDC cash came in through the "bridge" against $5.6M out. This time the border snapshot stops on Friday at 07:50 UTC — before the rally, so it can't show how money moved during the surge.
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. Funds don't trade on weekends, so the latest figures are Friday's, 18.09, and the next ones will be Monday's. On Thursday $159M went into the BTC funds and $433M on Friday; the ETH funds lost $39M on Thursday and took in $144M on Friday. The week of 14–18.09 in BTC closed almost flat, +$6M against −$288M the week before: buying on Monday, Thursday and Friday, $752M, barely covered the Tuesday–Wednesday outflow of $746M. In ETH the week came to −$140M against +$224M the week before. This contradicts the whales: the whales added short on perps exactly as the funds bought bitcoin for a second day.
What the options market says. This camp measures one thing: what insurance costs on Deribit. BTCskew+1.6 against 0.0 yesterday: after the rally the market again pays a little extra for downside protection (what skew is). On the two-day expiry it's the other way round — calls cost more than puts, 30 against 24. Insurance itself stays cheap: BTC two-day vol sits in the 13th percentile of its own hourly history since February, three weeks out in the 6th (what implied vol is). Our fear-and-greed index stands at 94 out of 100 against 91 in yesterday's snapshot. This camp is silent: near-dated the market pays up for a rise, on the monthly window slightly for a fall; there is no single direction here.
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 +0.008% yesterday, ETH+0.013% against +0.006% (what funding is). Longs pay shorts in both assets, and the payment went up. This contradicts the whales: demand for a leveraged long got more expensive over the day — in ETH it doubled.
What the crowd is doing. This camp measures how retail accounts stand against the whales. On Bybit perps 52% of BTC accounts stand long against 59% yesterday, in ETH65% against 68%. The gap between the crowd and the whales in BTC narrowed from 36.7 to 25.6 points — now in the 27th percentile of the month; in ETH from 41.5 to 33.2 points. This confirms the whales: retail didn't buy the rally at any price, it cut longs — a move in the same direction as the whales.
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. On OKX swaps $1.7M was liquidated — all of it shorts, 21% of the week's volume, a bit more than an average day. This contradicts the whales: the positions forced shut were shorts, even if the sum was small.
Again: this is positioning, not a direction forecast.
🌡ALTSEASON — the classic and our barometer
The classic altseason index stands at 35.6 out of 100 against 38.4 in Friday's measurement — bitcoin-season territory: alts lagged behind the BTC rally.
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 43.4% — $5.29B of $12.18B, almost unchanged.
Alt contracts with funding hotter than bitcoin's make up 74% of open interest against 86% — the bar here is BTC's own funding, and it went up over the day.
Retail in the top-10 coins stands 64.5% long; the hottest are XRP and DOGE, at 77% each.
Whales in alts are structurally short: 31.8% long across $1.47B of positions, the biggest of them HYPE. That gap itself is permanent, the signal is in its CHANGE — over the day the whales' long share fell by 1.5 points.
Full barometer: indiciadesk.com/en/altseason
⚖️VERDICT OF THE DAY
continuation ⟳ — the whales' BTC short tilt survived a 6% surge: the net short didn't shrink, it grew by $64M, and the biggest short positions didn't give up a single coin. The ratio fell only because big new longs opened alongside. Witnesses: the crowd sides with the whales; the funds, funding and liquidations go against them; the options market is silent.
What this does NOT mean. It isn't a claim that the rally is over. Whales holding a short against the price show endurance, not knowledge of where the market goes. Sunday's expiry is light, so the real test is Friday's quarterly on 25.09 — the heaviest expiry of the month in both assets.
🔒In today's full RADAR:
— what the rally did to the biggest short house: how many coins it added, what happened to its buffer before liquidation, and which whale flipped sides in the middle of the surge;
— six cases whose legs settled on Friday, plus three new ones — and which whales kept their premium a few hours before the surge.
ANALYST access → indiciadesk.com/en/agent
💎DEEP
🔒WHALES IN DETAIL 💠
Portraits from the Hyperliquid registry, snapshot 04:46 UTC. Nicknames aren't treated as identification.
The market's biggest loss.ETH SHORT $269.2M, leverage 5×, entry $2,297, uPnL −$32.8M against −$15.3M yesterday, liquidation at $3,374 — 29% above spot against 43% yesterday. The coin count didn't change: the size grew from price alone. The same address in BTC. SHORT $171.0M, leverage 5×, entry $72,731, uPnL −$17.5M against −$7.7M, liquidation at $118,251 (+46%). Three days running this address added to the bitcoin short — today it added nothing. A second address with the same pattern.ETH SHORT $187.8M and BTC SHORT $110.5M, both at 5× leverage, uPnL −$22.2M and −$13.2M, liquidations at $3,610 and $134,108, account $78.2M. Together the two addresses carry $85.6M of unrealised loss against $39.8M yesterday, and margin across the two accounts slimmed from $193.3M to $159.9M. The short at the edge didn't survive the surge. Yesterday's BTC SHORT of 440 coins, 40× leverage, entry $76,011, liquidation at $78,019. During the day the position was reopened several times and flipped to long in the afternoon; the address now holds a 30BTC short at 10×. The account shrank from $1.15M to $0.25M; whether forced or by hand, the snapshot doesn't show. A 20× short built up into the rally.BTC SHORT $87.2M: 1,077 BTC against 808 yesterday, average entry raised from $76,635 to $78,797, leverage from 10× to 20×. uPnL −$2.4M, liquidation at $87,681 — 8% above spot, account $10.5M. The same address holds an ETH SHORT of $62.9M at 20× from $2,500 and added 3,294 ETH over the day. A new $108.0MBTC long. 1,333 BTC at 3× leverage from $78,057, uPnL +$3.9M, account $121.0M — in the registry since the night, with the position already in place. A new 20× BTC long — out of the rally itself. LONG $86.7M, 1,070 BTC from $80,606, opened on Friday afternoon, uPnL +$0.4M, liquidation at $63,808 (−21%) — a distance like that at that leverage is only possible on cross margin. Account $8.7M, no public label. A market maker's address flipped. Yesterday — LONG 203BTC, now SHORT 583BTC ($47.2M, 20×, entry $81,066) and ETH SHORT 23,271 ETH ($60.9M) against 10,370 yesterday. For a market maker a reversal like this most often means an inventory hedge, not a view on direction. The ether longs.ETH LONG $79.2M at 20× from $2,134, uPnL +$14.6M — the market's biggest gain. The risky ETH LONG at 25× grew over the day from 15,500 to 33,875 ETH ($88.6M), entry $2,514, uPnL +$3.5M, liquidation at $2,523 — 4% below spot, account $5.4M. The third big ether short added margin.ETH SHORT 19,908 ETH ($52.1M) against 13,798 yesterday, average entry $2,373, leverage 25×, uPnL −$4.8M, liquidation at $4,837. The account grew from $32.1M to $51.0M despite a bigger loss — about $22M of margin was added. Yesterday's two new BTC longs. The 21× long from $77,235 is gone: the address holds a small short and $5k. The 40× long from $77,888 was cut from 232 to 139BTC, $435k in the green.
Cases in the registry — three new over the day; Friday's expiry settled the legs of six cases. Case #1092 · BTC call diagonal: 100 calls at $70,000 bought for Friday 25.09.2026, 100 calls at $72,000 sold for Friday 30.10.2026 — 200 contracts, entered at $80,978, new. Both legs are deep in the money. Net premium about 1.12 BTC paid (≈$91k).
Case #1091 · ETH bear call spread: 1,000 calls at $2,660 sold, 1,000 calls at $2,700 bought, expiry Monday 21.09.2026 — 2,000 contracts, entered at $2,618, new. Net premium about 2.1ETH received (≈$5.5k): the whale keeps it if ether doesn't rise above $2,660 by Monday — 1.3% from spot.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-09-21. Кит отримав $5k премії. Беззбитковість: $2 665.
Case #1090 · BTC put diagonal: the sold leg — 25 puts at $78,000 — settled yesterday at $77,720, so the whale gave up $280 per contract, ≈$7k. The 25 bought puts at $80,000 for Friday 25.09.2026 stay in play, but after the surge they are out of the money.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-09-18. Кит заплатив $55k премії. Беззбитковості в показаному діапазоні немає.
Case #948 · ETH condor for the quarterly: 2,750 puts at $1,700 bought, 2,750 puts at $1,900 sold, 3,000 calls at $2,800 sold, 3,000 calls at $3,000 bought, expiry Friday 25.09.2026 — 11,500 contracts, entered at $2,462, day 25. Net premium about 36.8ETH received (≈$91k). Spot $2,626 sits inside the winning zone of $1,900–$2,800. The day's biggest ether block stands on the same $2,800/$3,000 strikes.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-09-25. Кит отримав $91k премії. Беззбитковість: $1 867 і $2 830.
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), fourth day. From the $75,860 entry, spot has moved 6.9% against this position.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-10-30. Кит отримав $624k премії. Беззбитковість: $76 236.
Friday's settlement — by our own count from the settlement price. #1074 BTC bear call spread $81,000/$83,000 — both legs burned out at $77,720, the whale kept about 0.58BTC of premium (≈$45k); spot passed the sold strike only in the afternoon, after settlement. #1059 BTC short strangle $72,000/$86,000 — price inside, the whale kept about 0.7BTC (≈$55k). #1070 ETH call ratio spread — settled at $2,489, below the bought $2,550 strike, the whale lost about 6.4ETH (≈$16k); ether now stands already in the zone where the structure would be in profit. #1087 — the bought $2,550 put leg brought in ≈$12k, #1089 — the sold $77,000 put leg burned out in the whale's favour. The registry hasn't entered these sums yet. Also new: #1093 BTC — 18 calls at $83,000 bought for 25.09, 20 calls at $85,000 sold for 30.10, a two-date structure, 38 contracts. ΔOI over the week, both ways:BTC calls only: +3,227 at $82,000, +2,717 at $85,000, +2,398 at $80,000. ETH: +16,808 calls at $2,800 and +11,442 at $2,600 against +15,767 puts at $2,500.
🔬Who exactly
Both of the biggest shorts are Abraxas Capital Mgmt (Heka Funds): after three days of adding, the firm didn't add a single coin over the day, and its unrealised loss doubled to $85.6M. Margin across the two accounts is $159.9M against $193.3M yesterday.
The third big ether short, which deposited about $22M of margin and grew the position by 44%, is Fasanara Capital.
The market maker's address that flipped from long to short in both assets is Wintermute.
The risky 25× ether long that more than doubled over the day belongs to Machi Big Brother.
The 20× BTC short is self-labelled VBVIT; nicknames aren't treated as identification.
The 40× short at the edge, both big new BTC longs and the market's biggest gain are addresses without a public label.
Money by address. The biggest tranche in the available snapshot — $2.8M of BTC to a Wintermute address on Friday morning; over the week the coin channel sent $53.5M of BTC to players.
🔒THE WEEK'S DYNAMICS 🔬
Perps.BTC: net $423M short (long $238M against short $661M), $64M toward short since yesterday's snapshot, $115M over 7 days — the pace is speeding up. ETH: net $411M short (long $351M against $762M), almost unchanged over the day, $136M toward short over the week.
Gamma flip.BTC across all expiries $71,620 against $74,874 yesterday — it dropped once Friday's expiry left the open interest; spot is 13% above it (what the flip is). On the nearer seven-day window the flip is $74,489. ETH$2,308 against $2,371, spot 14% above it.
The price of fear. On the weekly window the premium is minus 5.4 (IV35.3 against realised HV40.6) against minus 9.0 yesterday — the gap narrowed. The market still travels further than options price in.
Changing of the guard. Over the week the whales assembled 233 confirmed structures: 57 bullish, 66 bearish, 30 on volatility, 80 on range — a third day with more bearish than bullish.
🔒CROSS-CHECK IN DETAIL 💠
BTC levels. Everything below comes from Deribit options open interest. On the light Saturday expiry the market-maker break-even corridor widened to $72,000–$81,500, with spot half a percent below its top; by our study across 390 expiries price stays inside such a corridor in roughly 82% of cases (what the corridor is). Max pain on the combined two-exchange open interest $78,000, on Deribit alone also $78,000 (what max pain is).
Today, Saturday 19.09. The expiries are light: BTC 5,334 contracts, put wall $75,500 on 170, call wall $78,000 on 805 — spot is already above it (what the walls are). ETH 38,506 contracts, max pain$2,550, put wall $2,380 on 3,577, call wall $2,800 on 3,105.
Tomorrow, Sunday 20.09.BTC 2,511 contracts, ETH 18,332 — the weekend is almost empty.
ETH levels. The corridor is $2,400–$2,640, with spot right at its top.
The quarterly, Friday 25.09.BTC: 189,199 contracts, max pain$72,000 on Deribit and $73,000 on the combined open interest — 11% below spot; densest are the $70,000 put (8,642) and the $70,000 call (10,916), with the $85,000 call (10,203) close behind. ETH: 768,461 contracts, max pain$2,200, put $2,100 on 36,897, call $3,000 on 37,556.
Fuel. Below BTC$42.0M of long positions in the $76,960–79,391 band against $22.7M of shorts above the market in the $82,631–85,062 band — after the rally there is almost twice as much fuel below as above. In ETH$115.5M of long fuel below the market in the $2,485–2,564 band, 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 empty above, at $86,000–$88,000, and below, at $73,000–$74,000. In ETH empty above the market at $2,700–$2,750, dense below spot.
Stress test ±2%. For BTC and ETH a 2% fall leaves the dealers in positive gamma — they damp the move. On a 2% rise price moves past the nearest call wall, and the damping on the way up weakens.
OI flow.BTC put/call across all expiries: month 0.56 · week 0.54 · now 0.56 — stable; ETH0.50 · 0.54 · 0.52 (what put/call is).
Two options venues. On the same expiries up to 30 days BTC put/call is 0.55 on Deribit against 1.34 on Bybit; ETH0.61 against 1.04 — over the day Bybit's BTC side turned noticeably 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 P24/C30 · 6d P31/C35 · 20d P33/C34, percentiles since February 13th, 13th and 6th against 4th, 6th and 3rd yesterday. ETH 2d P30/C38 · 6d P45/C49 · 20d P47/C50, percentiles 10th, 22nd and 13th. BTCDVOL34.9 against 30-day realised 34.1 — premium +0.9; ETHDVOL49.7 against HV49.6 (what the premium is).
💎SCENARIOS IN DETAIL 💠
The code's verdicts for yesterday. From 16.09: the corridor was confirmed (inside the range 94% of the time), the squeeze up was confirmed, the slide was cancelled at its cancellation level. From 17.09: the squeeze up was confirmed — a high of $81,528 against the $77,850 trigger; the corridor was not confirmed, the slide was cancelled. From 18.09 the slide was cancelled at its cancellation level; the corridor and the squeeze will be scored by the code on 20.09, when their horizon ends. The week since 12.09: 21 scenarios — 5 confirmed, 3 partially, 4 not, 7 cancelled at their cancellation levels, 2 still running. All-time: squeeze up 9 of 29, corridor 9 of 25 plus 6 partial, slide into the long fuel 5 of 19.
The corridor holds — 45%. ⏱ 2 days, to Monday 21.09. BTC stays between the fuel bands, $79,400–$82,650. Cancellation level: a touch of $76,950 — the bottom of the long-fuel band.
Squeeze up through the short fuel — 30%. ⏱ 2 days, to Monday 21.09. Trigger: a touch of $82,650 — the bottom of the band of short positions. Cancellation level: a touch of $79,400.
Slide into the long fuel — 25%. ⏱ 2 days, to Monday 21.09. Trigger: a touch of $79,400 — the top of the band of long positions. Cancellation level: a touch of $82,650.
This is how we weigh the odds — not a promise; the code will compute the verdict from spot history.
🔭WHAT TO WATCH
• Friday 25.09: the quarterly — 189,199 contracts in BTC and 768,461 in ETH, with max pain for both 11–16% below spot (💠).
• The buffer before liquidation for the biggest ether short: 29% against 43% yesterday — it shrank by a third in a day (💠).
• The whales' BTC net short at $423M: whether they keep adding if price holds above $80,000 (🔬).
🆓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 435%−$1,125+$86,219 21.03
Dust Strategy V1 349%−$1,125+$33,656 20.03
Volatility Convergence V3 3040%−$759+$12,440 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. Three trades closed in the top five over the day, all at a loss: two in Dust Strategy V2 at −$1,125 each and one in Volatility Convergence V3 at −$759. The most profitable signal wins only 5% of its 43 trades. Win rate isn't money.
📅PUBLIC LEDGER
(computed by code at the settlement price)
The market-maker corridor. Across 390 expiries since February the market-maker break-even corridor held the settlement price 320 times — 82%. Friday's 18.09 expiry held in both assets, as Thursday's did. 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 390 expiries. Yesterday both assets converged inside tolerance: BTC by 0.3%, ETH by 0.4% — a second expiry in a row. Decision: we don't chase max pain — a 6% surge began a few hours after just such a convergence.
The walls. The call wall held the settlement in 50% of expiries, the put wall in 41%: roughly a coin toss. On today's light expiry spot is already above the call wall. Decision: a wall without an expiry and a contract count isn't published.
Whale structures by type (our Deribit registry, 725 closed cases). Bear call spread — the type of the new ether case and of the case that burned out in the whale's favour yesterday: 60 closed, only 20% came in by strikes, −$891k in total. Call diagonal — the type of the new bitcoin case: 51 closed, −$1.55M in total. Condor — the type of the big quarterly case: 36 closed, 69% came in, −$126k 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. Dust Strategy V2 closed two trades after six quiet days, both at a loss — and remains the most profitable signal in the table. 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 — 94 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 — 13th percentile of the hourly history since February, six-day — also 13th, three weeks out — 6th: it was cheaper in only six hours out of a hundred.
• Which way protection tilts.BTCskew+1.6: puts cost slightly more than calls — yesterday there was no tilt at all. 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.