Report archive · 23.09.2026

INDICIA Radar

Case No. 20260923 · 23.09.2026

Two billion of fund buying in four daysand the short that grew through every one of them.

Case #20260923 · 23.09.2026 07:24 UTC · BTC $86,357 / ETH $2,749 · analysis: Opus 5 by Anthropic

📅YESTERDAY

Tuesday's 22.09 expiry settled at 08:00 UTC, and the market-maker break-even corridor did not hold in either asset: BTC came out 2.1% above it, ETH 0.2%. From max pain BTC diverged by 5.6% and ETH by 4.6%. The registry measures the levels at settlement time, so they do not match the morning levels we published yesterday.

The case registry took in fourteen new whale cases over the day — the most in a month.

⚡THE GIST

• Whales have added to their bitcoin short for a third day and the pace is picking up: the net tilt is $438M against $386M yesterday, and $43M went toward short on the 24-hour window.

• The funds bought for a fourth day running: $715M went into the BTC ETFs on Tuesday after $999M on Monday. The week of 16–22.09 in bitcoin closed at +$2.01B — the 97th percentile of everything we have measured since February.

• The registry took in 14 new cases, almost all in bitcoin and almost all for Friday's quarterly; four of them are one and the same bearish structure on calls deep in the money.

• Overleveraged whales have turned almost solidly long: 79% against 66% yesterday across 64 addresses.

• Our two lenses on bitcoin whales point different ways for the first time in several days: short on the perps, and on options a call position for October above the market.

• Verdict — continuation ⟳: the tilt is growing and accelerating, even though price has run against it for a fourth day.

• 📊 Our Polygon — Pendulum: standing position, +$264 on the day, +$10,014 in total since 11.05.

• 📊 Our Polygon — signals: best — Dust Strategy V2 +$86,219 at a 5% win rate · worst — Wheel Trail V8 −$9,583. Table at the bottom.

🐋WHALES: WHAT CHANGED — three arenas

Arena one — Hyperliquid futures. The short grows against price.
In BTC the short side grew from $754M to $813M and the long side from $368M to $375M: the net tilt is $438M against $386M yesterday. Over the week $157M toward short, and $43M on the 24-hour window, i.e. more than a quarter of the weekly shift in a single day (how we track whale positions).
In ETH it is the other way: the long side grew from $449M to $484M and the tilt slimmed to $353M — the smallest in a week.
Overleveraged whales number 64 against 61 yesterday, and 79% of them are longs: a week ago it was exactly half. Among the top whales there was not one forced closure over the day.

Arena two — Deribit options. The registry took in more cases in a day than in the previous five together.
Fourteen new structures, thirteen of them in bitcoin. Four share one design: the whale sells calls deep in the money and buys calls higher up, all with Friday expiry. Together that is 1,310 contracts and almost $3M of premium received — but the premium there is almost equal to the width of the spread, so it only pays if price falls by Friday.
The block market stays busy: 96 bitcoin structures over two days (what a block is). The most visible are a sale of calls far above the market and a mirror position on a rise.
Quiet accumulation outside the blocks is the same for a third day: almost all call-side and almost all in the October expiry.

Arena three — money at the exchange border. Ether is brought in and bitcoin taken out, a second week running.
Over seven days $108.2M of ether and $91.2M of USDC cash came into the exchange, while $103.9M of BTC left against $14.0M brought in. With all coins together, $224.3M came in against $190.2M of outflow.
The border snapshot refreshes once a day and stops on the morning of 22.09.

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.
On Tuesday $715M went into the BTC funds and $162M into the ETH funds — a fourth day of inflow running. Today's figures are not in yet: the funds count a day after the US session closes.
The week of 16–22.09 in bitcoin closed at +$2.01B against −$706M the week before; that is the 97th percentile of everything we have measured since February. In ether +$313M against +$201M.
This contradicts the whales: in four days the funds bought more than two billion of the coins themselves, and over the same stretch the whales' short tilt grew.

What the options market says. This camp measures one thing: what insurance costs on Deribit.
BTC skew +0.6 against +1.4 yesterday: the extra charge for downside protection has almost gone (what skew is). In ETH the tilt is −0.3, so there is none there either.
Insurance gets dearer along with the move: BTC DVOL 38.6 against 37.9 yesterday, a premium over the actual move of +2.2. Two-day vol sits in the 55th percentile of its own history since February — above the middle for the first time in a month (what implied vol is).
Our fear-and-greed index stands at 76 out of 100 against 78 yesterday.
This contradicts the whales: the market stopped paying extra for downside exactly when the whales added to their short.

What the futures say. This camp measures who pays whom to hold a position.
BTC funding on Hyperliquid is +0.011% in eight-hour terms and close to zero on Binance; in ETH it is +0.023% against +0.006% on Binance (what funding is). Longs have been paying shorts for a fifth day, and in ether the rate doubled over the day.
This contradicts the whales: demand for a leveraged long is not merely holding — in ether people now pay twice as much for it.

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 51% yesterday, and 65% in ETH against 66%.
The gap between the crowd and the whales in BTC is 20.5 points against 18.6 yesterday — it widened for the first time in four days. In ETH the gap is 29.1 points, and over three days it compressed by 6.9, which already clears our threshold for an event.
This confirms the whales: in bitcoin the gap is growing again, and it grows from the whales' side, the ones that added short.

Any signs of stress. This camp measures whether anyone has already been forced out of the market.
Among the top Hyperliquid whales there was not one forced closure over the day. On OKX swaps only $313k was liquidated — 3% of the week's volume, and for the first time in a week most of it was longs.
This camp is silent: the market went through another percent up without a single cascade.

Again: this is positioning, not a direction forecast.

🌡ALTSEASON — the classic and our barometer

The classic altseason index stands at 36.7 out of 100 against 36.4 yesterday — bitcoin territory.

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% — $5.92B of $13.63B; open interest itself has grown by almost a billion and a half over three days.

Alt contracts with funding hotter than bitcoin's make up 83% of open interest. The bar here is BTC's own funding, and it jumps every day, so this scale makes sense only alongside funding itself.

Retail in the top-10 coins stands 67.0% long; the hottest are SUI and XRP at 76% each.

Whales in alts are structurally short: 30.2% long across $1.71B of positions, the biggest of them HYPE. That gap itself is permanent, the signal is in its CHANGE — over the day it barely moved.

Full barometer: indiciadesk.com/en/altseason

⚖️VERDICT OF THE DAY

continuation ⟳ — the whales' short tilt in bitcoin has grown for a third day and added $43M over the last one, a quarter of the whole weekly shift. It is happening on the fourth day of a rising price and against the two billion the funds brought in over four days. Witnesses: the crowd sides with the whales; the funds, funding and the option price of fear go against them; stress is silent.

What this does NOT mean. This is not a claim that the market turns down. We publish the tilt, not a projection: a week ago the same tilt sat alongside a 14% rise. The nearest test is Friday's quarterly — 184,191 contracts in BTC and 777,086 in ETH, and that is exactly where the whales opened most of their new cases over the day.

🔒In today's full RADAR:

— the four same-design cases for Friday: which strikes, how much premium and on what condition the whale makes money on them;

— how many coins the biggest short house added for a third day running and how much margin it wired in to hold it.

ANALYST access → indiciadesk.com/en/agent

💎DEEP

🔒WHALES IN DETAIL 💠

Portraits from the Hyperliquid registry, snapshot 05:16 UTC at BTC $86,490 and ETH $2,754. Nicknames aren't treated as identification.

The market's biggest loss. ETH SHORT $289.9M, leverage 5×, entry $2,304, uPnL −$49.1M against −$45.3M yesterday, liquidation at $4,027 — 45% above spot. The coin count grew again: about 105,300 against 104,400 yesterday.
The same address in BTC. SHORT $236.2M against $222.9M yesterday — about 2,730 coins against 2,605, average entry up from $75,083 to $75,538. uPnL −$31.1M, liquidation at $135,654 (+56%), account $151.5M.
A second address with the same pattern. BTC SHORT $152.3M and ETH SHORT $215.2M: it added on both sides too, average entries $74,443 and $2,338. uPnL −$21.9M and −$33.8M, account $120.5M. Together the two addresses carry $135.9M of unrealised loss against $123.0M yesterday, while margin across the two accounts grew from $250.3M to $272.0M — about another $22M wired in.
The biggest bitcoin long. LONG $127.0M, about 1,470 coins at 20× from $81,765, uPnL +$7.6M, liquidation at $69,850 (−20%), account $14.7M.
The 35× long is holding. BTC LONG $92.0M from $81,875, uPnL +$5.4M, liquidation at $81,531 — 6% below spot on an account of $7.0M.
The short at 25×. BTC SHORT $98.8M, average entry $80,862, uPnL −$7.0M, liquidation at $111,198 (+28%), account up from $23.7M to $32.5M. The same address added 1,718 coins to its ether short: now $84.7M from $2,618, with liquidation 32% above spot.
The ether longs. The market's biggest gain is ETH LONG $84.0M at 20× from $2,134, uPnL +$19.4M. A new ether long at 10× from $2,694 has grown to $114.4M, uPnL +$3.3M, liquidation 9% below spot. The risky 25× long was cut by 1,700 coins over the day, now $83.5M from $2,644, liquidation at $2,416 — 13% below spot.
The third big bitcoin short. BTC SHORT $61.0M at 30× leverage from $80,877, uPnL −$4.3M, liquidation at $148,735 (+71%), account $49.6M.
Fragility. 64 overleveraged whales against 61 yesterday, $1.06B of positions together, and 79% of them are longs against 66% yesterday. Not one sits near a margin call.

Cases in the registry — fourteen new over the day, thirteen in bitcoin.
Case #1106 · BTC bear call spread: 193 calls at $75,000 sold and 193 calls at $81,000 bought, expiry Friday 25.09.2026 — 386 contracts, entered at $86,785. Net premium about 13.16 BTC received (≈$1.14M), and that is the day's largest. Both legs are deep in the money and the premium is almost equal to the width of the spread: the whale keeps it in full only if price falls below $75,000 by Friday.

Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-09-25. Кит отримав $1.1M премії. Беззбитковість: $80 930.

Case #1110 · BTC bear call spread: 150 calls at $70,000 sold, 150 calls at $75,000 bought, expiry Friday 25.09.2026 — 300 contracts, premium about 8.61 BTC (≈$747k). The same design, only lower strikes. Two more like it sit beside it: #1111 across 293 contracts (≈$877k) and #1107 across 331 contracts (≈$165k) — there the strikes are only a thousand dollars apart, which is why the premium is smaller.
Case #1105 · BTC condor: 100 puts at $78,000 bought, 100 puts at $85,000 sold, 100 calls at $87,000 sold, 100 calls at $95,000 bought, expiry Friday 09.10.2026 — 400 contracts, premium about 4.0 BTC received (≈$347k). The winning zone runs between $85,000 and $87,000, and spot stands right inside it.

Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-10-09. Кит отримав $347k премії. Беззбитковість: $81 529 і $90 471.

Case #1109 · BTC call ratio spread: 100 calls at $88,000 bought and 200 calls at $100,000 sold with expiry Friday 27.11.2026 — 300 contracts, about 2.14 BTC paid (≈$186k). The whale gains from a moderate rise toward $100,000 and starts losing if the market clears that level with room to spare. A structure of exactly this design closed against another whale yesterday at $30k.

Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-11-27. Кит заплатив $186k премії. Беззбитковість: $89 857.

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 29. Net premium about 36.8 ETH received (≈$91k). Spot $2,749 stands 2% below the sold call strike: the winning zone still holds to Friday, but the cushion is the smallest of the whole case.

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 8.22 BTC received (≈$624k), eighth day. From the $75,860 entry spot has moved 13.8% against this position.

Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-10-30. Кит отримав $624k премії. Беззбитковість: $76 236.

Also new: #1112 — a butterfly on calls sold across 200 contracts; #1113 and #1116 — two small structures that sell protection; #1103, #1104, #1108, #1114, #1115 — spreads on puts and diagonals, all in bitcoin.
ΔOI over the week, both ways: BTC is calls only and almost all in the 30.10 expiry: +22,155 at $95,000, +12,744 at $90,000, +11,296 at $100,000. ETH: +19,589 calls at $2,800 and +14,594 at $3,000 against +15,578 puts at $2,500.

🔬Who exactly

Both of the biggest shorts are Abraxas Capital Mgmt (Heka Funds): for a third day running the firm added to its positions in both assets and topped up margin. Over the day that is another 125 coins of bitcoin or so and a thousand of ether, with margin across the two accounts at $272.0M against $250.3M. The firm's unrealised loss is $135.9M against $123.0M yesterday.

The 25× BTC short and the ether short of the same address, the one that added 1,718 coins, are self-labelled VBVIT; nicknames aren't treated as identification.

The third big bitcoin short is Fasanara Capital.

The risky 25× ether long, cut by 1,700 coins over the day, belongs to Machi Big Brother.

The 35× long with its line 6% below spot, the biggest bitcoin long, the new ether long and the market's biggest gain are addresses without a public label.

Money by address. In the weekly snapshot the coin channel sent out $103.9M of BTC, the largest tranches to Wintermute; ether, by contrast, was brought in — $108.2M, part of it from Binance.

🔒THE WEEK'S DYNAMICS 🔬

Perps. BTC: net $438M short (long $375M against short $813M), $43M toward short on the 24-hour window (from yesterday's snapshot, $52M), $157M over seven days — the pace is picking up. ETH: net $353M short (long $484M against $836M), $9M toward long on the 24-hour window, $48M toward short over the week.

Gamma flip. BTC across all expiries $71,745, spot 20% above it (what the flip is); over the week the flip fell by $2,008 while the call wall rose by $10,000. ETH $2,256, spot 22% above.

The price of fear. On the weekly window the premium is +2.4 (DVOL 38.5 against the actual weekly HV 36.1), and over seven days it rose by 6.1. A third day running the market charges a mark-up for fear instead of a discount.

Changing of the guard. Over the week the whales assembled 282 confirmed structures: 97 bullish, 80 bearish, 34 on volatility, 71 on range — more bullish than bearish for a second day.

🔒CROSS-CHECK IN DETAIL 💠

BTC levels. Everything below comes from Deribit options open interest. The market-maker break-even corridor is $84,000–$86,500 against $80,000–$85,500 yesterday — it rose behind spot, and spot stands near its top edge; by our study across 398 expiries price stays inside such a corridor in roughly 81% of cases (what the corridor is). Max pain is $85,500 on Deribit, and $85,500 on the combined two-exchange open interest for today's expiry as well (what max pain is).

Today, Wednesday 23.09. BTC is a thin expiry: put wall $84,500 on 630 contracts, call wall $88,000 on 237 (what the walls are). ETH: max pain $2,730 on the combined open interest and $2,700 on Deribit; put wall $2,680 on 3,605, call wall $2,800 on 7,873 — spot between them.

The quarterly, Friday 25.09. BTC: 184,191 contracts, max pain $76,000 on the combined open interest and $75,000 on Deribit — 12% below spot; densest are the $70,000 put (8,113) and the $70,000 call (8,856). ETH: 777,086 contracts, max pain $2,300 on the combined open interest — 16% below spot; put $2,100 on 35,103, call $3,000 on 38,564.

The October expiry, Friday 30.10. 104,972 contracts in BTC, and that is exactly where the quiet accumulation of calls above the market has gone for a third week.

ETH levels. The corridor is $2,620–$2,760, spot in its upper part; max pain $2,700.

Fuel. Under BTC $42.0M of long positions in the $82,166–84,760 band against $19.1M of shorts above the market in the $88,220–90,814 band. In ETH $31.6M below the market against $3.9M above it. 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 is empty above at $92,000–$94,000 and below at $79,000–$80,000. In ETH it is empty above at $2,900–$3,000 and below at $2,550–$2,600.

Stress test ±2%. On a 2% fall BTC stays in positive gamma territory — dealers damp the move. On a 2% rise it is still under the $90,000 call wall, so the ceiling holds.

OI flow. BTC put/call across all expiries: month 0.59 · week 0.55 · now 0.54 — the put share has been melting for a third day. ETH: 0.56 · 0.49 · 0.54 (what put/call is).

Two options venues. On the same expiries up to 30 days BTC put/call is 0.73 on Deribit against 1.45 on Bybit; ETH 0.66 against 0.99. 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 P40/C40 · 9d P38/C37 · 37d P38/C37, percentiles since February 55th, 37th and 36th. ETH 2d P51/C56 · 9d P52/C51 · 37d P53/C53, percentiles 53rd, 40th and 40th. BTC DVOL 38.6 against 30-day realised 36.3 — premium +2.2; ETH DVOL 53.3 with HV 50.6, premium +2.7 (what the premium is).

💎SCENARIOS IN DETAIL 💠

The code's verdicts for yesterday. From 20.09: the corridor did not come in — price stayed inside its bounds only 56% of the time; the squeeze up through the short fuel did come in (a maximum of $87,023 against the $82,000 trigger). From 21.09: the corridor did not come in — 6% of the time inside; the squeeze did (a maximum of $87,175 against $83,050). Three scenarios from 22.09 run to tomorrow. The week since 16.09: 21 scenarios — 7 confirmed, 6 not, 5 cancelled at their cancellation levels, 3 still running. All-time: squeeze up 12 of 33, corridor 10 of 29 plus 6 partial, slide into the long fuel 5 of 22.

The corridor holds — 40%. ⏱ 2 days, to Friday 25.09. BTC stays between the fuel bands, $84,750–$88,200 (levels rounded to the band edges). Cancellation level: a touch of $82,150 — the bottom of the long-fuel band.

Squeeze up through the short fuel — 35%. ⏱ 2 days, to Friday 25.09. Trigger: a touch of $88,200 — the edge of the band of short positions. Cancellation level: a touch of $84,750.

Slide into the long fuel — 25%. ⏱ 2 days, to Friday 25.09. Trigger: a touch of $84,750 — the edge of the band of long positions. Cancellation level: a touch of $88,200.

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 — 184,191 contracts in BTC and 777,086 in ETH, and fourteen fresh whale cases, most of them on exactly this expiry (💠).

• The margin of the biggest short house: $272.0M against $250.3M yesterday — a third day of topping up running (🔬).

• Overleveraged whales: 79% long against half of them a week ago — the fuel map is flipping faster than price (💠).

🆓TAIL

📊POLYGON

(our own signals at real prices, not a backtest)

⚙️Pendulum · Wheel (standing position, real prices)

+$264 on the day · +$10,014 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              43    5% −$1,125  +$86,219  21.03
Dust Strategy V1              34    9% −$1,125  +$33,656  20.03
Volatility Convergence V3     31   42%   +$915  +$13,355  26.05
Skew 2.0 V2                   41   37%   −$775  +$10,606  26.05
Fear Flash V2                 23   30%   −$590   +$2,432  16.05

Deepest in the red: Wheel Trail V8 −$9,583 · Wheel Trail V6 −$8,481 · Wheel Trail V7 −$6,983 — three variants of one signal that hunts a reversal and pays for every attempt while the trend runs. Over the day all three went deeper into the red, and Fear Flash V2 closed a trade $590 in the red and slid to a 30% win rate. 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 398 expiries since February the market-maker break-even corridor held the settlement price 323 times — 81%, a point lower than two days ago. Tuesday's expiry was broken in both assets, and that is the second such day this week. Decision: we lean on the corridor knowing that roughly one expiry in five it doesn't hold — and we publish every break the same day.

Max pain. An exact match with the settlement in 36% of those same 398 expiries. Yesterday BTC diverged from it by 5.6% and ETH by 4.6%. Decision: we don't chase max pain; on the quarterly it stands 12–16% below the market, and that is not a promise of a move there.

The walls. The call wall held the settlement in 48% of expiries, the put wall in 43%: roughly a coin toss. Decision: a wall without an expiry and a contract count isn't published.

Whale structures by type (our Deribit registry, 727 closed cases). Bear call spread — the type of the four new Friday cases: 61 closed, 21% came in on their strikes, −$885k in total. Condor — the type of two cases in play: 36 closed, 69% came in, −$126k in total. Call ratio spread — the type of the case that closed against the whale yesterday: 30 closed, not one came in, −$1.07M in total. All closed cases together: −$5.84M. Decision: win rate isn't money, and we don't copy whale structures — we track where they stand.

Polygon. Pendulum +$10,014 since 11.05 with +$264 on the day: the table writes the daily line into the running tally with a lag. One trade closed in the top five, in the red. Decision: we publish both tallies daily with the same denominator, including the days when nothing happened.

📏Scale calibrator

• What protection costs. Our fear-and-greed index — 76 out of 100 against 78 yesterday. 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 — 55th percentile of the hourly history since February, nine-day — 37th, thirty-seven days out — 36th: the near days cost more than average for the first time in a month.

• Which way protection tilts. BTC skew +0.6: puts are barely dearer than calls — yesterday it was +1.4. 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.