Fourteen spreads under the quarterly look like a short on bitcointhirteen of them are financing, not a view.
Case #20260925 · 25.09.2026 06:22 UTC · BTC$84,203 / ETH$2,680 · analysis: Opus 5.5 by Anthropic
The snapshot was taken before the 08:00 UTC quarterly settlement: its result comes in tomorrow's radar.
📅YESTERDAY
Thursday's 24.09 expiry settled at 08:00 UTC, and the market-maker break-even corridor held in both assets for a second day running. From max painBTC diverged by 1.8% and ETH by 1.6% — both outside tolerance.
Over the day the case registry caught up on old cases: 785 closed with a result against 727 yesterday. Separately, we fixed a registry error: on expiry day it closed cases before the official settlement, at the morning price snapshot. This morning 72 cases of the quarterly closed that way — we returned them to open, and the code will score them after 08:00.
⚡THE GIST
• Today at 08:00 UTC the quarterly settles — the heaviest expiry of the quarter: 167,945 contracts in BTC and 792,213 in ETH. 110 open whale cases stand on it.
• For a second day the whales are shrinking their short tilt in bitcoin, and this time with a new long: the long side grew from $150M to $262M, and the net tilt slimmed from $404M to $347M — the smallest of the week's morning snapshots.
• Two heavily leveraged players stand at the edges: a 35× long with its liquidation line less than 2% below the market and a new 40× short with its line less than 2% above it.
• The funds are buying for a sixth day running: $191M went into the BTC ETFs on Thursday. The week of 18–24.09 closed at +$2.68B, the 98th percentile of our measurements.
• Under the quarterly the registry has gathered 14 bearish spreads on calls with about $8.7M of premium. In 13 of them the premium almost equals the distance between the strikes — the registry itself treats such deals as financing operations rather than positions on a fall.
• Verdict — continuation ⟳: the short tilt is melting for a second day, and now it is a new long that shrinks it, not an exit.
• 📊 Our Polygon — Pendulum: the best of four variants, −$329 on the day, +$9,491 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. After yesterday's exit the leverage is coming back — on the long side. In BTC the long side grew from $150M to $262M, the short side from $554M to $609M. The net tilt is $347M against $404M yesterday: over two days it slid down from $438M (how we track whale positions). In ETH the tilt is melting too: the short slimmed from $758M to $708M, the long barely moved at $409M; net $298M against $336M. Overleveraged whales number 63 against 61 yesterday, $1.02B of positions together, and 75% of them are now longs. Two stand less than 2% from forced closure — on opposite sides of the market.
Arena two — Deribit options. All eyes are on today's expiry. 110 open whale cases stand on the quarterly: 99 in bitcoin and 11 in ether. The most visible group is 14 bearish spreads on calls assembled over three days: the whale sells calls deep in the money and buys higher ones. Together that is about $8.7M of premium, and in 13 of the 14 it almost equals the distance between the strikes: with that design the whale loses nothing if price stays above the strikes and earns only on a fall. The registry has already excluded two such cases as financing operations, so we don't treat the group as a position on a fall. The block market produced 121 bitcoin structures over two days (what a block is) — the most visible include both a position on a large move either way and a position on a strong rise. Quiet accumulation outside the blocks is the same for a fifth day: October calls above the market. In ether it is puts near and below the market, and almost two thirds of the largest footprint sit in today's expiry.
Arena three — money at the exchange border. For the first time in a week the snapshot is fresh — up to this morning. Over seven days $142.7M was brought into the exchange and $116.3M taken out. The bulk is USDC cash via the bridge: $105.9M in against $48.1M out. Bitcoin and ether, by contrast, were taken out: BTC$30.8M out against $15.2M in, ETH$25.4M out against $5.5M in.
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 Thursday $191M went into the BTC funds and $66M into the ETH funds — a sixth day of inflow running. Today's figures aren't in yet: the funds count a day after the US session closes. The week of 18–24.09 in bitcoin closed at +$2.68B against −$440M the week before, the 98th percentile of our measurements; in ether +$747M against −$67M. This confirms the whales: for the first time since yesterday's exit the whales are adding long, and the funds are buying for a sixth day running.
What the options market says. This camp measures one thing: what insurance costs on Deribit. BTCskew+0.2 against +1.7 yesterday: the extra charge for downside protection almost vanished over the day (what skew is). In ETH+0.1. Insurance got cheaper again: BTC two-day vol sits in the 14th percentile of its own history since February against the 52nd yesterday, DVOL36.0 against 36.6 (what implied vol is). The premium over the actual move on the monthly window is −1.2. Our fear-and-greed index stands at 72 out of 100 against 75 in yesterday's radar. This confirms the whales: the market stopped paying extra for a fall exactly when the whales began adding long.
What the futures say. This camp measures who pays whom to hold a position. BTC funding is +0.010% on Hyperliquid in eight-hour terms and +0.005% on Binance, same as yesterday; in ETH+0.010% and +0.006% (what funding is). On Hyperliquid +0.010% is the venue's base rate, not a sign of demand: yesterday it dipped to zero and simply came back. This camp is silent: funding sits on its neutral base and says nothing about demand for longs.
What the crowd is doing. This camp measures how retail accounts stand against the whales. On Bybit perps 56% of BTC accounts stand long against 55% yesterday; in ETH67%, same as yesterday. The gap between the crowd and the whales in BTC is 25.2 points, same as yesterday; in ETH29.6 against 31.1. This camp is silent: retail barely moved, and the gap stands where it was.
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 a single forced closure over the day. On OKX swaps $361k was liquidated, two thirds of it longs; that is 4% of the week's volume. This camp is silent: no cascade, although two whales stand less than 2% from the edge.
Again: this is positioning, not a direction forecast.
🌡ALTSEASON — the classic and our barometer
The classic altseason index stands at 34.8 out of 100 against 36.7 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% — $5.59B of $12.88B, almost unchanged.
Alt contracts with funding hotter than bitcoin's make up 68% of open interest. The bar here is BTC's own funding, and it jumps every day, so this scale is best taken together with funding itself.
Retail in the top-10 coins stands 68.5% long; the hottest are DOGE and XRP at 77% each.
Whales in alts are structurally short: 31.9% long across $1.62B 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 rose by a point.
Full barometer: indiciadesk.com/en/altseason
⚖️VERDICT OF THE DAY
continuation ⟳ — the whales' short tilt in bitcoin is melting for a second day: $438M the day before yesterday, $404M yesterday, $347M today. Yesterday it was shrunk by both sides walking out, today by a new long of $112M. Witnesses: the funds and options side with the whales; futures, the crowd and stress are silent.
What this does NOT mean. This is not a claim that the market will go up. The market's biggest short — a pair of addresses of one house carrying a carry trade — hasn't moved and still makes up 63% of the short side. And both a long and a short stand less than 2% from liquidation — a move either way will knock someone out. Today at 08:00 the quarterly closes 110 whale cases, and we'll show the result of each one tomorrow.
🔒In today's full RADAR:
— two whales less than 2% from liquidation on opposite sides: size, leverage, account — and what each of them held in this same spot yesterday;
— 14 identical cases under the quarterly: the strikes, the premium and the level below which the whales keep everything.
ANALYST access → indiciadesk.com/en/agent
💎DEEP
🔒WHALES IN DETAIL 💠
Portraits from the Hyperliquid registry, snapshot 04:46 UTC at BTC$84,271 and ETH$2,683. Nicknames aren't treated as identification.
The market's biggest loss.ETH SHORT $280.5M, leverage 5×, entry $2,304, uPnL −$39.6M, liquidation at $4,005 — 49% above spot. Over the day — no change in coins. The same address in BTC. SHORT $237.5M, entry $75,921, uPnL −$23.5M, liquidation at $133,705 (+59%), account $146.8M. A second address with the same pattern.BTC SHORT $147.6M and ETH SHORT $208.1M, both at 5×, uPnL −$17.2M and −$26.8M, account $116.9M. Together the two addresses carry $107.1M of unrealised loss, same as yesterday, with margin across the accounts at $263.7M. They hold 63% of the entire bitcoin short side — by our analysis, a carry trade, not a position on a fall. The 35× long — a correction to yesterday. Yesterday we wrote that this address's position vanished from the registry overnight. In fact the wallet dropped out of the snapshots for a few hours and came back the same morning, and over the day it changed size several times. It is now LONG $88.1M from $84,178, liquidation at $82,994 — less than 2% below spot, account $2.4M. The 40× short — the mirror on the other side.BTC SHORT $42.1M from $83,135, uPnL −$568k, liquidation at $85,594 — less than 2% above spot, account $1.2M. The position is new, the player isn't: yesterday this address held a 300BTC short at the same leverage, closed it and reopened larger. The 40× long grew.BTC LONG $40.0M from $84,668, uPnL −$189k, liquidation at $81,269 (−4%), account $2.6M; yesterday the position was $27.8M. A pair across two assets. A new address opened BTC SHORT $28.2M at 4× from $84,118 and holds ETH LONG $53.7M at 4× from $1,936 with a $14.9M gain. Account $20.5M — this is a position on ether against bitcoin, not on the market's direction. The ether longs. The market's biggest gain is ETH LONG $81.3M at 20× from $2,134, uPnL +$16.6M. A 10× long from $2,694 at $110.6M is $446k in the red, liquidation 6% below spot. The risky 25× long — $94.6M from $2,661, liquidation at $2,542 (−5%), account $8.1M. Fragility.63 overleveraged whales against 61 yesterday, $1.02B of positions together, 75% of them longs against 69%. Formally nobody is near a margin call, but two stand less than 2% from liquidation.
Cases in the registry — six new over the day, 110 open on today's expiry. Case #1130 · BTC bear call spread: 129 calls at $74,000 sold and 129 calls at $79,000 bought, expiry today — 258 contracts, entered at $84,233, new. Net premium about 7.64BTC received (≈$644k) — the largest among the new ones. Both legs are deep in the money and the premium almost equals the width of the spread: the whale keeps it in full only if the settlement comes in below $74,000.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-09-25. Кит отримав $644k премії. Беззбитковість: $79 050.
Case #1120 · BTC bear call spread: 190 calls at $68,000 sold and 190 calls at $80,000 bought, expiry today — 380 contracts, entered at $84,130, day two. Premium about 27.0BTC (≈$2.27M) — the largest in the whole group of 14 such cases, and it too covers almost the full width of the spread.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-09-25. Кит отримав $2.3M премії. Беззбитковість: $79 922.
Case #1132 · BTC risk reversal: 25 puts at $86,000 sold and 25 calls at $86,000 bought, expiry today — 50 contracts, premium about 0.60BTC received (≈$50k). Next to it is #1133, an exact mirror: the same strike and size, but from the opposite sides. Two records with opposite legs at one level are most likely the two sides of one trade.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-09-25. Кит отримав $50k премії. Беззбитковість: $83 995.
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 today — 11,500 contracts, day 31 and the last. Net premium about 36.8ETH received (≈$91k). Spot $2,680 stands 4.5% below the sold call strike: if the settlement comes in below $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 #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), day ten. From the $75,860 entry spot has moved 11.0% against this position.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-10-30. Кит отримав $624k премії. Беззбитковість: $76 236.
Also new: #1129 and #1131 — two more bearish spreads on calls for today's expiry, ≈$203k and ≈$210k of premium; #1134 — a call diagonal with legs on today and Friday 02.10. Over three days the registry took in 16 such spreads under the quarterly. Two of them were excluded as financing operations: the premium there equals the width of the spread. In 13 of the remaining 14 the same feature holds; only #1121 stands out of the money and earns without a fall. ΔOI over the week, both ways:BTC is calls only and almost all in the 30.10 expiry: +22,561 at $95,000, +16,373 at $90,000, +11,676 at $100,000. ETH: +21,499 puts at $2,600 (62% of it in today's expiry) and +13,165 at $2,700 against +13,090 calls at $3,000.
🔬Who exactly
Both of the biggest shorts are Abraxas Capital Mgmt (Heka Funds): over the day the house didn't move its positions; unrealised loss $107.1M, margin $263.7M.
The 35× long near the edge, the new 40× short near the edge, the 40× long and the ether-against-bitcoin pair are addresses without a public label.
The risky 25× ether long belongs to Machi Big Brother.
Money by address. In the weekly snapshot the largest bitcoin outflow is $5.9M to an address of Wintermute; the largest ether outflow is $8.0M to a private wallet.
🔒THE WEEK'S DYNAMICS 🔬
Perps.BTC: net $347M short (long $262M against short $609M), $59M toward long on the 24-hour window ($57M from yesterday's snapshot), $22M toward long over seven days. ETH: net $298M short (long $409M against $708M), $31M toward long on the 24-hour window ($38M from yesterday's snapshot), $116M toward long over the week.
Gamma flip.BTC across all expiries $76,664, spot 10% above it (what the flip is); over the week the flip rose by $5,214. ETH$2,294, spot 17% above.
The price of fear. On the weekly window the premium is +1.2 (DVOL36.1 against the actual weekly HV34.9), and over seven days it rose by 9.2. On the monthly window the premium is negative, −1.2: 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 312 confirmed structures: 111 bullish, 122 bearish, 23 on volatility, 56 on range. Bearish outnumber bullish for a second day, and most of them are the wave of spreads under the quarterly.
🔒CROSS-CHECK IN DETAIL 💠
BTC levels. Everything below comes from Deribit options open interest. On today's quarterly expiry the market-maker break-even corridor is wide, $68,000–$85,500, and spot stands near its top; by our study across 402 expiries price stays inside such a corridor in roughly 81% of cases (what the corridor is). Max pain is $79,000 on the combined two-exchange open interest and $78,000 on Deribit — 6–7% below spot (what max pain is).
The quarterly, today Friday 25.09.BTC 167,945 contracts: densest are the $70,000 put (7,682) and the $70,000 call (7,823) (what the walls are). ETH 792,213 contracts, max pain$2,400 on the combined open interest and $2,350 on Deribit — 10–12% below spot; put $2,100 on 35,190, call $3,000 on 38,549.
After the quarterly. Saturday and Sunday are thin: BTC 3,092 and 1,618 contracts. The next notable expiry is Friday 02.10, 24,161 BTC contracts; then Friday 30.10 — 115,778, and the heaviest ahead is Friday 25.12, 118,414.
ETH levels. The corridor is $1,900–$2,800, spot in its upper part.
Fuel. Under BTC$178.7M of long positions within 5% of the market ($80,057–84,271), $125.7M of them in the nearest 2%. Above the market $43.7M of shorts within 5% ($84,271–88,485), almost all in the nearest 2%. There is four times more below, because the long leverage came back. Until now our generator labelled these sums with the far 2–5% band only, although it counted the full 5%; from today the label is fixed. In ETH$29.1M below the market against $2.2M 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.
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 0.56 · now 0.60 — the put share is back at the monthly level. ETH0.55 · 0.51 · 0.56 (what put/call is).
Two options venues. On the same expiries up to 30 days BTC put/call is 0.93 on Deribit against 1.26 on Bybit; ETH0.70 against 0.87. 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 P28/C27 · 7d P34/C33 · 35d P36/C35, percentiles since February 14th, 14th and 20th. ETH 2d P39/C39 · 7d P47/C46 · 35d P51/C50, percentiles 17th, 21st and 25th. BTCDVOL36.0 against 30-day realised 37.2 — premium −1.2; ETHDVOL50.8 with HV50.8 (what the premium is).
💎SCENARIOS IN DETAIL 💠
The code's verdicts for yesterday. After yesterday's radar the code scored three scenarios from 22.09: the corridor was confirmed — price stayed inside 98% of the time; the slide into the long fuel was confirmed too — a minimum of $83,773 against the $83,850 trigger; the squeeze up was cancelled at its cancellation level. Two scenarios from 23.09 run out today at 07:34 UTC, three from 24.09 run until tomorrow. The week since 18.09: 21 scenarios — 6 confirmed, 5 not, 5 cancelled at their cancellation levels, 5 still running.
The all-time tally — on a new base. From now on "of N" counts only the scenarios that reached a verdict; those cancelled at their level are shown separately. Before, they sat in the denominator, and the tally looked worse than it was. Squeeze up through the short fuel — 12 of 26, 9 more cancelled; corridor — 11 of 25 plus 6 partial, 5 more cancelled; slide into the long fuel — 6 of 13, 10 more cancelled. The directional types are still no better than a coin toss.
The corridor holds — 45%. ⏱ 2 days, to Sunday 27.09. BTC stays within the near fuel zones, up to 2% from the market: $82,600–$85,950. Cancellation level: a touch of $80,050 — the bottom edge of the long fuel.
Slide into the long fuel — 30%. ⏱ 2 days, to Sunday 27.09. Trigger: a touch of $82,600 — an exit into the far zone of the long fuel. Cancellation level: a touch of $85,950.
Squeeze up through the short fuel — 25%. ⏱ 2 days, to Sunday 27.09. Trigger: a touch of $85,950 — beyond the near zone of the short fuel. Cancellation level: a touch of $82,600.
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 quarterly and the 110 whale cases on it — we'll show the result of each one tomorrow (💠).
• Two whales less than 2% from liquidation on opposite sides: a move either way will knock someone out (🔬).
• Friday 02.10: the next notable expiry after a thin weekend (💠).
🆓TAIL
📊POLYGON
(our own signals at real prices, not a backtest)
⚙️Pendulum · Wheel(the best of four variants, a live curve at real prices)
−$329 on the day · +$9,491 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 3142%+$915+$13,355 26.05
Skew 2.0 V2 4337%−$192+$10,463 26.05
Fear Flash V2 2330%−$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 red by $192, win rate 37%. 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 402 expiries since February the market-maker break-even corridor held the settlement price 327 times — 81%. Thursday's expiry held in both assets for a second day running. Decision: we lean on the corridor knowing that roughly one expiry in five it doesn't hold.
Max pain. An exact match with the settlement in 35% of those same 402 expiries. Yesterday BTC diverged from it by 1.8% and ETH by 1.6%. Decision: we don't chase max pain; on today's quarterly it stands 6–7% below the market, and that is not a promise of a move there.
The walls. The call wall held the settlement in 69 of 144 expiries where price reached it — 48%; the put wall in 41 of 98, 42%. Decision: we don't publish a wall without an expiry and a contract count, nor its percentage without a base.
Whale structures. The registry: 785 closed cases (5 of them from Bybit), −$5.70M in total for the whales. From today a case closes only at the official settlement price: before, on expiry day the registry took the morning snapshot and closed the case ahead of time. This same morning we re-closed 193 old cases at official prices, where the exit price had not been taken from the settlement: the verdict changed in four, the result in five, and the overall sum went from −$5.77M to −$5.70M. Decision: win rate isn't money, and we don't copy whale structures — we track where they stand.
Polygon. Pendulum +$9,491 since 11.05 with −$329 on the day. From today both numbers come from one series — the live curve of the best of four variants. Before, the total came from the weekly table and the day's move from another variant, so the two didn't match; for yesterday the same curve would have given −$349 with +$9,820. Decision: we publish the tally daily with the same denominator and with the variant's name.
📏Scale calibrator
• What protection costs. Our fear-and-greed index — 72 out of 100 against 75 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 — 14th percentile of the hourly history since February, seven-day — also 14th, thirty-five days out — 20th: insurance is again cheaper than usual.
• Which way protection tilts.BTCskew+0.2: puts and calls cost almost the same — yesterday puts were dearer by 1.7. 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.