Report archive · 24.09.2026

INDICIA Radar

Case No. 20260924 · 24.09.2026

Half a billion of leverage walked out of bitcoin overnightwhat stayed behind isn't a position on a fall.

Case #20260924 · 24.09.2026 05:08 UTC · BTC $84,354 / ETH $2,700 · analysis: Opus 5 by Anthropic

📅YESTERDAY

Wednesday's 23.09 expiry settled at 08:00 UTC, and the market-maker break-even corridor held in both assets — the first time after two days of breaks. From max pain BTC diverged by 1.4% and ETH by 1.6%: both outside tolerance.

The case registry took in twelve new whale cases over the day, and nine of them are the same structure it logged the day before.

⚡THE GIST

• Leveraged whales walked out of bitcoin en masse: the short side slimmed from $813M to $554M and the long side from $375M to $150M. Almost half a billion dollars of positions left the registry on both sides in a single day.

• The two biggest long addresses we had been tracking closed out completely; one large short cut 97% of its bitcoin position, and its account shrank from $38.2M to $13.3M.

• After that exit, two addresses of one house hold 69% of the whole short side. By our analysis yesterday, that pair opens spot and perp in the same second — so it carries a carry trade, not a position on a fall.

• The funds bought for a fifth day running: $347M went into the BTC ETFs on Wednesday. The week of 17–23.09 closed at +$2.65B — the 98th percentile of everything we have measured since February.

• The registry took in 12 new cases; nine are bearish spreads on calls deep in the money expiring tomorrow. Over two days that makes thirteen, some $9.2M of premium together.

• Verdict — break ⚡: the direction of positioning changed, but it changed because both sides left, not because someone took a new side.

• 📊 Our Polygon — Pendulum: standing position, $0 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 biggest leveraged exit of the week.
In BTC the short side slimmed from $813M to $554M and the long side from $375M to $150M. The net tilt is $404M against $438M yesterday, and for the first time in three days the move went toward long (how we track whale positions).
The shift started on Wednesday afternoon and ran through the night. Overleveraged whales number 61 against 64, and their positions together slimmed from $1.06B to $822M — a quarter less in a day.
In ETH it is calmer: short from $836M to $758M, long from $484M to $422M, tilt $336M.
Among the top whales there was one forced closure over the day, $3.7M, and it was a long.

Arena two — Deribit options. A wave of identical structures under tomorrow's quarterly.
The registry took in 12 new cases, and nine of them are bearish spreads on calls deep in the money expiring Friday. With the ones from the day before that is thirteen, and the premium there is about $9.2M. In spreads like these the premium is almost equal to the width of the spread: the whale keeps it in full only if price falls below the sold level by tomorrow.
The block market produced 103 bitcoin structures over two days (what a block is). The most visible are a condor across a thousand contracts on a range below the market and a butterfly on calls far above it.
Quiet accumulation outside the blocks is the same in bitcoin for a fourth day: calls for October above the market. In ether it runs the other way — all three of the week's largest footprints are puts, and most of them sit in today's and tomorrow's expiries.

Arena three — money at the exchange border. Ether keeps coming in, bitcoin is taken out.
Over seven days $242.2M was brought into the exchange and $162.3M was taken out. The largest inflows are ether from Binance, the largest outflows bitcoin.
The border snapshot refreshes once a day and stops on the morning of 23.09.

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 Wednesday $347M went into the BTC funds and $105M into the ETH funds — a fifth day of inflow running, though the smallest of the five. Today's figures aren't in yet: the funds count a day after the US session closes.
The week of 17–23.09 in bitcoin closed at +$2.65B against −$882M the week before; that is the 98th percentile of everything we have measured since February. In ether +$641M against −$58M.
This contradicts the whales: the funds have bought for a fifth day, and over that same day the leveraged whales cut positions on both sides.

What the options market says. This camp measures one thing: what insurance costs on Deribit.
BTC skew +1.7 against +0.6 yesterday: the extra charge for downside protection is back, and it is the largest of the week (what skew is). In ETH the tilt is −0.5.
The insurance itself got cheaper: BTC DVOL 36.6 against 38.6 yesterday, and the premium over the actual move on the monthly window went negative, −0.3. Two-day vol sits in the 52nd percentile of its own history since February (what implied vol is).
Our fear-and-greed index stands at 75 out of 100 against 76 yesterday.
This confirms the whales: the market pays extra for puts again exactly when long leverage on the perps is two and a half times smaller.

What the futures say. This camp measures who pays whom to hold a position.
BTC funding on Hyperliquid is near zero for the first time in a week and +0.005% on Binance in eight-hour terms; in ETH it is +0.010% on both venues (what funding is).
This camp is silent: in bitcoin the extra charge for a long vanished together with the long leverage itself, so the rate now testifies to nothing.

What the crowd is doing. This camp measures how retail accounts stand against the whales.
On Bybit perps 55% of BTC accounts stand long against 52% yesterday — retail bought into the fall. In ETH 67% against 65%.
The gap between the crowd and the whales in BTC is 25.2 points against 20.5 yesterday — the biggest one-day jump this week. In ETH the gap is 31.1 points.
This contradicts the whales: retail is building its long exactly when the leveraged whales are leaving on both sides.

Any signs of stress. This camp measures whether anyone has already been forced out of the market.
Among the top Hyperliquid whales there was one forced closure over the day, $3.7M — a long. On OKX swaps $475k was liquidated, 98% of it longs; that is 5% of the week's volume.
This confirms the whales: for the first time in a week it was longs, not shorts, that were forced out.

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, unchanged from 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 43.9% — $5.61B of $12.78B; open interest itself slimmed by $850M over the day, and that is the same leveraged exit.

Alt contracts with funding hotter than bitcoin's make up 55% of open interest. The bar here is BTC's own funding, and over the day it fell almost to zero, so this time the scale rises for a reason that has nothing to do with the alts.

Retail in the top-10 coins stands 68.1% long; the hottest are DOGE and XRP at 77% each.

Whales in alts are structurally short: 30.8% long across $1.53B 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

break ⚡ — for three days the whales' tilt in bitcoin grew toward short, and today it went the other way for the first time: $404M against $438M. But it was not a new long that did it, it was both sides walking out: the short side slimmed by $259M and the long side by $225M. The leverage has left, and two thirds of what remains on the short side belongs to a pair of addresses carrying a carry trade. Witnesses: options and stress side with the whales; the funds and the crowd go against them; funding is silent.

What this does NOT mean. This is not a claim that the fall has ended or begun. Yesterday price moved the same way as the tilt for the first time in a week — but a week ago that same tilt sat alongside a 10% rise. The nearest test is tomorrow's quarterly: most of the whales' new cases sit on it.

🔒In today's full RADAR:

— the two long addresses we tracked for three days: when exactly they left, with what account and what was left behind;

— the nine identical cases for tomorrow's quarterly: the strikes, the premium and the level below which the whale keeps everything.

ANALYST access → indiciadesk.com/en/agent

💎DEEP

🔒WHALES IN DETAIL 💠

Portraits from the Hyperliquid registry, snapshot 03:16 UTC at BTC $83,830 and ETH $2,675. Nicknames aren't treated as identification.

The market's biggest loss. ETH SHORT $280.6M, leverage 5×, entry $2,304, uPnL −$39.7M against −$49.1M yesterday — the slide gave the house a breather. Liquidation at $4,243, 58% above spot.
The same address in BTC. SHORT $237.2M, average entry $75,912, uPnL −$23.5M against −$31.1M, liquidation at $142,574 (+69%), account $149.4M.
A second address with the same pattern. BTC SHORT $147.6M and ETH SHORT $208.2M, both at 5×, uPnL −$17.2M and −$26.8M, account $115.8M. Together the two addresses carry $107.2M of unrealised loss against $135.9M yesterday, with margin across the two accounts at $265.2M. These are the addresses that now hold 69% of the entire bitcoin short side.
The first long left at the top. The address that held 1,460 BTC from $81,765 still showed $4.2M of paper gain in the afternoon, and by evening the position was gone. Its account on the last snapshot is $11.3M.
The second long added to the very end. The address at 35× first cut from 1,057 coins to 857, then went the other way and built to 1,425 at an average entry of $83,372 — buying into the fall. Its account slimmed from $6.3M to $3.9M over the day, and overnight the position vanished from the registry. The same day the registry logged one forced long closure of $3.7M, but the snapshot does not let us tie it to this address.
The big short cut nearly all of it. The address that held 1,163 BTC short left 36 coins — 97% of the position gone; its ether short went from 30,577 coins to 17,782. The account fell from $38.2M to $13.3M: part of that is the loss booked on closing, the rest was withdrawn.
A market maker flipped long. BTC LONG $39.1M at 20× from $83,980, 384 coins added over the day, liquidation far away, account $58.4M.
New longs at 40×. LONG $29.5M from $83,888 with liquidation 15% below spot, and LONG $27.8M from $85,270 with liquidation just 5% below spot — accounts $3.7M and $2.5M.
The ether longs. The market's biggest gain is ETH LONG $81.3M at 20× from $2,134, uPnL +$16.6M. A new ether long at 10× from $2,694 is now $409k in the red, liquidation 6% below spot. The risky 25× long was built up to $97.1M, average entry $2,658, liquidation at $2,534 — 6% below spot on an account of $8.4M.
The third big ether short. ETH SHORT $71.8M at 25× from $2,475, uPnL −$5.6M, liquidation at $4,057 (+51%); the same address cut its bitcoin short from 701 coins to 137.
Fragility. 61 overleveraged whales against 64 yesterday, $822M of positions together against $1.06B — a quarter less in a day. 69% of them are longs, against 79% yesterday.

Cases in the registry — twelve new over the day, all in bitcoin.
Case #1120 · BTC bear call spread: 190 calls at $68,000 sold and 190 calls at $80,000 bought, expiry tomorrow, Friday 25.09.2026 — 380 contracts, entered at $84,130. Net premium about 27.0 BTC received (≈$2.27M), 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 $68,000 by tomorrow.

Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-09-25. Кит отримав $2.3M премії. Беззбитковість: $79 922.

Case #1117 · BTC bear call spread: 351 calls at $76,000 sold, 351 calls at $78,000 bought, expiry Friday 25.09.2026 — 702 contracts, premium about 8.28 BTC (≈$697k). The same design on a narrower spread.

Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-09-25. Кит отримав $697k премії. Беззбитковість: $77 994.

Case #948 · ETH condor: 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 30 and the last. Net premium about 36.8 ETH received (≈$91k). Spot $2,700 stands 4% below the sold call strike: if ether does not reach $2,800, the whale keeps the premium in full.

Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-09-25. Кит отримав $91k премії. Беззбитковість: $1 867 і $2 830.

Case #1105 · BTC condor for Friday 09.10.2026: 100 puts at $78,000 bought, 100 puts at $85,000 sold, 100 calls at $87,000 sold, 100 calls at $95,000 bought — 400 contracts, entered at $86,785, day two. Premium about 4.0 BTC (≈$347k). The winning zone runs $85,000–$87,000, and over the day spot left it downward.

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

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), day nine. From the $75,860 entry spot has moved 11.2% against this position — over the day that gap narrowed for the first time.

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

Also new: #1118, #1119, #1121–#1125 — seven more of the same bearish spreads on calls, strikes from $58,000 to $85,000, some $3.3M of premium together; #1126–#1128 — three small structures on puts.
ΔOI over the week, both ways: BTC is calls only and almost all in the 30.10 expiry: +22,098 at $95,000, +13,012 at $90,000, +11,514 at $100,000. ETH is puts only: +16,498 at $2,600 (78% of it in today's and tomorrow's expiries), +12,587 at $2,700, +10,364 at $2,500.

🔬Who exactly

Both of the biggest shorts are Abraxas Capital Mgmt (Heka Funds): over the day the firm barely touched its positions, and its unrealised loss shrank from $135.9M to $107.2M as price slid. Margin across the two accounts is $265.2M.

The address that cut 97% of its bitcoin short, its account shrinking from $38.2M to $13.3M, is self-labelled VBVIT; nicknames aren't treated as identification.

The third big ether short, the one that also cut its bitcoin leg, is Fasanara Capital.

The 25× ether long built up to $97.1M belongs to Machi Big Brother.

The address that flipped long in bitcoin and added 384 coins is Wintermute: for a market maker that is most often an inventory hedge, not a view on direction.

Both long addresses that left, the new 40× long and the market's biggest gain are addresses without a public label.

Money by address. In the weekly snapshot the largest inflows are ether from Binance, $46.8M in two tranches; the largest outflows are bitcoin to unverified addresses.

🔒THE WEEK'S DYNAMICS 🔬

Perps. BTC: net $404M short (long $150M against short $554M), $28M toward long on the 24-hour window — a reversal; over seven days still $53M toward short. ETH: net $336M short (long $422M against $758M), $22M toward long on the day, $24M toward long over the week.

Gamma flip. BTC across all expiries $74,200, spot 14% above it (what the flip is); over the week the flip fell by $674 while the call wall rose by $5,000. ETH $2,297, spot 18% above.

The price of fear. On the weekly window the premium is +0.8 (DVOL 35.8 against the actual weekly HV 35.0), and over seven days it rose by 7.0. On the monthly window the premium is already negative, −0.3: on the near horizon insurance costs more than the fact, further out it costs less.

Changing of the guard. Over the week the whales assembled 309 confirmed structures: 97 bullish, 106 bearish, 31 on volatility, 75 on range. Bearish outnumber bullish for the first time in three days — and almost all of them come from yesterday's and today's wave of spreads under the quarterly.

🔒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 and spot stands right on its bottom edge; by our study across 400 expiries price stays inside such a corridor in roughly 81% of cases (what the corridor is). Max pain is $85,000 both on Deribit and on the combined two-exchange open interest (what max pain is).

Today, Thursday 24.09. BTC is a thin expiry: put wall $85,000 on 603 contracts, call wall $86,000 on 289, both above spot (what the walls are). ETH: max pain $2,700 on both venues; put wall $2,660 on 6,568, call wall $2,740 on 2,332.

The quarterly, tomorrow Friday 25.09. BTC: max pain $78,000 both on Deribit and on the combined open interest — 7% below spot; densest are the $70,000 put (7,653) and the $70,000 call (8,274). ETH: max pain $2,350 on the combined open interest and $2,300 on Deribit — 13% below spot; put $2,100 on 35,103, call $3,000 on 38,911.

ETH levels. The corridor is $2,660–$2,740, spot inside it; max pain $2,700.

Fuel. Under BTC $38.1M of long positions in the $79,638–82,153 band against $36.6M of shorts above the market in the $85,507–88,022 band — over the day the two sides almost levelled out: long fuel shrank while short fuel almost doubled. In ETH $122.3M of long fuel below the market against $19.5M of short fuel 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 dense above spot and empty below at $78,000–$79,000. In ETH the same: dense above, empty below.

Stress test ±2%. On a 2% fall BTC runs into the densest put wall — the move is damped. On a 2% rise it clears the nearest call wall, and the damping upward weakens.

OI flow. BTC put/call across all expiries: month 0.60 · week 0.55 · now 0.57 — the put share is growing again. ETH: 0.54 · 0.50 · 0.56 (what put/call is).

Two options venues. On the same expiries up to 30 days BTC put/call is 0.81 on Deribit against 1.28 on Bybit; ETH 0.68 against 0.89 — over the day the Deribit side leaned further toward puts while Bybit went the other way. 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 P41/C37 · 8d P37/C34 · 36d P37/C35, percentiles since February 52nd, 28th and 20th. ETH 2d P47/C46 · 8d P48/C48 · 36d P51/C52, percentiles 35th, 27th and 33rd. BTC DVOL 36.6 against 30-day realised 37.0 — premium −0.3; ETH DVOL 52.0 with HV 50.8, premium +1.1 (what the premium is).

💎SCENARIOS IN DETAIL 💠

The code's verdicts for yesterday. The "squeeze up through the short fuel" scenario from 23.09 was cancelled at its cancellation level: a minimum of $84,113 against the $84,750 level. The rest — two corridors and one slide — still run. The week since 17.09: 21 scenarios — 5 confirmed, 6 not, 5 cancelled at their cancellation levels, 5 still running. All-time: squeeze up 12 of 34, corridor 10 of 29 plus 6 partial, slide into the long fuel 5 of 22.

The corridor holds — 45%. ⏱ 2 days, to Saturday 26.09. BTC stays between the fuel bands, $82,150–$85,500 (levels rounded to the band edges). Cancellation level: a touch of $79,600 — the bottom of the long-fuel band.

Slide into the long fuel — 30%. ⏱ 2 days, to Saturday 26.09. Trigger: a touch of $82,150 — the edge of the band of long positions. Cancellation level: a touch of $85,500.

Squeeze up through the short fuel — 25%. ⏱ 2 days, to Saturday 26.09. Trigger: a touch of $85,500 — the edge of the band of short positions. Cancellation level: a touch of $82,150.

This is how we weigh the odds — not a promise; the code will compute the verdict from spot history.

🔭WHAT TO WATCH

• Tomorrow, 08:00 UTC: the quarterly — and the thirteen whale cases assembled under it over two days (💠).

• What is left on the short side: 69% now sits with one pair of addresses carrying a carry trade, the rest has gone (🔬).

• The premium over the actual move on the monthly window went negative for the first time in a week (💠).

🆓TAIL

📊POLYGON

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

⚙️Pendulum · Wheel (standing position, real prices)

$0 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                   42   38%    +$48  +$10,654  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 one trade closed in the top five: Skew 2.0 V2 in the green by $48, and its win rate rose to 38%. 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 400 expiries since February the market-maker break-even corridor held the settlement price 325 times — 81%. Wednesday's expiry held in both assets after two days of breaks. 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 400 expiries. Yesterday BTC diverged from it by 1.4% and ETH by 1.6% — both outside tolerance. Decision: we don't chase max pain; on tomorrow's quarterly it stands 7% below the market in bitcoin and 13% below it in ether.

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 nine new cases: 61 closed, 21% came in on their strikes, −$885k in total. Condor — the type of the two cases in play: 36 closed, 69% came in, −$126k 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 $0 on the day. One trade closed in the top-five signals, in the green by $48. 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 — 75 out of 100 against 76 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 — 52nd percentile of the hourly history since February, eight-day — 28th, thirty-six days out — 20th: the further out the expiry, the cheaper the insurance.

• Which way protection tilts. BTC skew +1.7: puts are dearer than calls, and that is the largest tilt of the week — yesterday it was +0.6. 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.