The short tilt stopped growing without starting to meltmeasured on the same 147 addresses, a flat day is a result too.
Case #20260927 · 27.09.2026 04:41 UTC · BTC$84,316 / ETH$2,693 · analysis: Opus 5.5 by Anthropic
📅YESTERDAY
Saturday's 26.09 expiry settled at 08:00 UTC: BTC$84,043, ETH$2,690. The market-maker break-even corridor held in both assets for a fourth day running. In ETH the settlement matched max pain — a 0.4% gap; in BTC the two were 2.3% apart.
The registry took in no new cases over two days; the closed tally is unchanged at 858 cases.
⚡THE GIST
• The whales' short tilt in bitcoin barely changed over the day: on a constant set of 147 addresses — −$8M against +$27M and +$35M over the two previous days. The growth has stopped, but there is no melting either.
• In ether the whales cut their short tilt by $30M over the day: longs on the same set added $17M, shorts shrank by $13M.
• The options market is paying for protection against a fall again: BTCskew+2.0 against −0.8 yesterday — puts are dearer than calls once more.
• Long fuel within 5% under bitcoin is down to $31.5M against $162.7M yesterday: the liquidation lines of two large 40× longs moved deeper, roughly 6% below the market, as unrealised profit on their accounts grew.
• Verdict — continuation ⟳: the short tilt in bitcoin holds at yesterday's level, and only the options market agrees with the whales.
• 📊 Our Polygon — Pendulum: the best of four variants, +$124 on the day, +$9,735 in total since 11.05.
• 📊 Our Polygon — signals: best — Dust Strategy V2 +$83,969 at a 4% win rate · worst — Wheel Trail V8 −$9,583. Table at the bottom.
🐋WHALES: WHAT CHANGED — three arenas
Arena one — Hyperliquid futures. As yesterday, we measure the day's change on a constant set of addresses. Today that is 147 addresses present in both yesterday's snapshot at 06:16 UTC and today's at 04:16 (how we track whale positions). This set already includes the large 40× long that yesterday's set lacked, so the level of the tilt here differs from yesterday's — we compare only the change. In BTC the long side barely moved over the day (+$1M), while the short side slimmed by $7M: the net short tilt changed by −$8M. In ETH the long added $17M and the short shrank by $13M: the tilt changed by −$30M. Across the whole registry the sum today is: BTC long $297M against a short of $555M, ETH$448M against $780M. Overleveraged whales number 68 against 66 yesterday, $1.10B of positions together, 72% of them longs against 67%. One is near a margin call.
Arena two — Deribit options. It's the weekend, and the block market is quiet. Over two days only 8 structures were recognised in bitcoin; the most visible among them are a position on a sharp fall and a position on a big move either way. In ether — two positions on a big move. Quiet accumulation outside the blocks is the same for a seventh day (what a block is): October calls above the market. In ether, over the week, calls above the market and puts near it and below were gathered — spread across nine to thirteen expiries.
Arena three — money at the exchange border. The snapshot is fresh — up to this morning. Over seven days $159.7M was brought into the exchange and $102.2M taken out. The bulk is USDC cash via the bridge: $130.3M in against $56.8M out. Bitcoin and ether kept being taken out: BTC$20.1M out against $6.9M in, ETH$11.7M out against $2.1M in. Most of that outflow, as yesterday, went to addresses of a single player.
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. The funds are closed until Monday: the last session was Friday 25.09, with +$134M into the BTC funds and +$87M into the ETH funds. The week of 21–25.09 in bitcoin closed at +$2.39B against +$6M the week before, the 97th percentile of our measurements — but the daily inflow shrank every day. This camp is silent: there is no new data over the weekend.
What the options market says. This camp measures one thing: what insurance costs on Deribit. BTCskew+2.0 against −0.8 yesterday: puts are dearer than calls again (what skew is). In ETH−0.3 against −0.2. Insurance got slightly dearer but stays cheap: BTC two-day vol sits in the 11th percentile since February against the 1st yesterday, DVOL34.9 against 34.6 (what implied vol is). The premium over the actual move on the monthly window is +0.6 against −2.0 yesterday — mainly because the actual move itself calmed down: 30-day HV34.3 against 36.6. Our fear-and-greed index stands at 79 out of 100, same as yesterday. This camp confirms the whales: the whales keep their short tilt, and the options market again pays extra for protection against a fall.
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 +0.005% yesterday — that is the venue's base rate, not a sign of demand; on Binance +0.005%, same as yesterday. In ETH+0.010% on both (what funding is). This camp is silent: funding is back at its neutral base.
What the crowd is doing. This camp measures how retail accounts stand against the whales. On Bybit perps 57% of BTC accounts stand long and 67% in ETH, same as yesterday. This camp is silent: neither the crowd nor the whales moved noticeably over the day.
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 there were almost no liquidations over the day — $740 against $6.7M over seven days. This camp is silent: no cascade.
Again: this is positioning, not a direction forecast.
🌡ALTSEASON — the classic and our barometer
The classic altseason index stands at 52.4 out of 100. The coin list has changed again: only pairs with more than $1M of daily turnover enter the count, and today there are 225 such alts against 257 yesterday. On today's list yesterday's value is 54.3, so over the day the index slipped a little. This is the transition zone: altseason starts at 75, bitcoin season sits below 25.
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 45.6% — $5.82B of $12.74B, against 46.0% yesterday.
Alt contracts with funding hotter than bitcoin's make up 66% of open interest against 75% yesterday.
Retail in the top-10 coins stands 67.1% long; the hottest are XRP and DOGE at 77% each.
Whales in alts are structurally short: 31.5% long across $1.74B 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 0.6 points.
Full barometer: indiciadesk.com/en/altseason
⚖️VERDICT OF THE DAY
continuation ⟳ — the whales' short tilt in bitcoin holds at yesterday's level: on a constant set of addresses −$8M over the day after +$27M and +$35M over the two days before. In ether it shrank by $30M. Witnesses: options side with the whales; the funds are closed; futures, the crowd and stress are silent.
What this does NOT mean. This is not a claim that the market will go down. The market's biggest short — a pair of addresses of one house carrying a carry trade — again didn't move and makes up 70% of the bitcoin short side. The weekend is quiet: few blocks, the funds are closed, and a day without liquidations doesn't yet say where price will go.
🔒In today's full RADAR:
— two large 40× longs whose liquidation lines moved deeper over the day without a single bitcoin trade — and what moved them;
— five notable cases out of 134 open, standing on October and later: strikes, premium and where each one starts to make money.
ANALYST access → indiciadesk.com/en/agent
💎DEEP
🔒WHALES IN DETAIL 💠
Portraits from the Hyperliquid registry, snapshot 04:16 UTC at BTC$84,468 and ETH$2,700; the addresses' trade history and fund movements were checked via the exchange's public API. Nicknames aren't treated as identification.
The market's biggest loss.ETH SHORT $282.3M, leverage 5×, entry $2,304, uPnL −$41.4M, liquidation at $4,165 — 54% above spot. The same address in BTC. SHORT $238.9M, entry $75,949, uPnL −$24.1M, liquidation at $139,041 (+65%), account $159.7M. A second address with the same pattern.BTC SHORT $148.0M and ETH SHORT $209.5M, both at 5×, uPnL −$17.6M and −$28.1M, account $122.6M. Together the two addresses carry $111.2M of unrealised loss against $105.7M yesterday; margin across the accounts is $282.3M against $278.8M. Their $387M is 70% of the bitcoin short side across the whole registry. The large 40× long.BTC LONG $98.8M from $83,823, uPnL +$751k, liquidation at $79,724 — 5.6% below spot, against $80,729 yesterday. The account is $7.8M against $5.8M yesterday, although since yesterday morning the address hasn't made a single trade or brought in any funds. The increase came from unrealised profit: +$0.7M on bitcoin itself and +$1.3M on the address's second position — a ZEC long of $20.7M at 10×. Both sit on one cross-margin account, so the gain on ZEC also pushed the bitcoin long's liquidation line deeper. The second 40× long.BTC LONG $38.0M from $84,373, uPnL +$42k, liquidation at $78,996 (−6%) against $80,113 yesterday. Account $3.3M against $2.5M: since yesterday morning the address hasn't traded bitcoin; it bought 500 ZEC and received $64k from another address, and the rest of the increase came from unrealised profit on BTC and ZEC. The 40× short. Still 200BTC — SHORT $16.9M from $83,135, liquidation at $85,623, about 1.5% above spot; account $0.45M against $0.55M. This is the large position closest to its liquidation line in the whole market. The ether longs. The market's biggest gain is ETH LONG $81.8M at 20× from $2,134, uPnL +$17.1M. The 10× long from $2,694 at $111.3M is now $255k in profit, liquidation 7% below spot.
Cases in the registry — no new ones; five notable out of 134 open. Another 12 cases were marked by the registry today as dismantled before expiry — judged by the drop in open interest at their strikes. Among them is #1080, the synthetic short from $70,000 on 30.10 that we showed for three days: OI at its strike fell by 49%, with spot at exit 11.1% above entry. We see the exit only through OI, so this is an estimate, not a confirmed trade. Case #1081 · BTC risk reversal: 100 calls at $69,000 sold and 100 puts at $69,000 bought, expiry Friday 30.10.2026 — a synthetic short from $69,000, opened the same day as #1080; premium ≈9.61BTC received (≈$729k), day twelve. From the $75,860 entry spot has moved 11.1% against this position; it still stands.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-10-30. Кит отримав $729k премії. Беззбитковість: $76 290.
Case #979 · BTC call ratio spread: 50 calls at $85,000 bought and 100 calls at $105,000 sold, expiry Friday 30.10.2026, entered 28.08 at $79,841, net premium ≈1.5BTC paid (≈$119k). Spot stands near the bought strike: the position starts making money roughly above $87,400 — the strike plus the premium paid — and pays most at $105,000; with two calls sold for each one bought, it loses only on a very strong rise — roughly above $122,000.
Case #187 · BTC call ratio spread: 25 calls at $80,000 bought and 75 calls at $100,000 sold, expiry Friday 25.12.2026, entered 23.06 at $62,465, net premium ≈0.2BTC paid (≈$13k). The bought call is already in the money; the position pays most at $100,000, and with three calls sold for each one bought it starts losing roughly above $109,700.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-12-25. Кит заплатив $13k премії. Беззбитковість: $80 512 і $109 744.
Case #1079 · ETH bull call spread: 3,000 calls at $5,000 bought and 3,000 calls at $7,000 sold, expiry 26.03.2027, entered 16.09 at $2,403, premium ≈28.8ETH paid. The position is far out of the money: ether would have to almost double just to reach the lower strike.
Case #546 · ETH strangle: 3,750 puts at $1,000 and 3,750 calls at $4,000 bought, expiry 25.06.2027, entered 06.07 at $1,806, premium ≈293ETH paid, day 84. A position on a very large move either way over a nine-month horizon.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2027-06-25. Кит заплатив $530k премії. Беззбитковість: $859 і $4 141.
ΔOI over the week:BTC is calls only and almost all in the 30.10 expiry: +23,630 at $95,000 (93% of it in 30.10), +19,417 at $90,000, +12,107 at $100,000. ETH: +13,747 calls at $3,000 against +13,377 puts at $2,700 and +12,169 puts at $2,500.
🔬Who exactly
Both of the biggest shorts are Abraxas Capital Mgmt (Heka Funds): over the day the house's positions barely changed; unrealised loss $111.2M, margin $282.3M.
Machi Big Brother — BTC LONG $33.7M at 40× with its liquidation line 18% below spot and ETH LONG $89.2M at 25×, liquidation at $2,514 (−7%); together $1.2M in profit. Overnight his orders four times took the other side of someone else's liquidations — about $38k together; this is not his own liquidation.
An address labelled Fasanara Capital raised its BTC SHORT to $27.5M at 30× against $20.8M yesterday and holds ETH SHORT $60.9M at 25×, uPnL −$2.8M.
Both 40× longs and the 40× short are addresses without a public label.
Money by address. Over seven days $17.0M of bitcoin out of $20.1M of total BTC outflow went to addresses of Wintermute, and $9.0M of ether out of $11.7M.
🔒THE WEEK'S DYNAMICS 🔬
Perps on a constant set of addresses.BTC over three days: the short tilt grew by $27M from 24 to 25.09, by $35M from 25 to 26.09, and shrank by $8M from 26 to 27.09. ETH: −$40M, +$42M, −$30M. The usual weekly and 24-hour shifts are still computed across the whole sample, so we don't give them.
Gamma flip.BTC across all expiries $72,521 against $71,752 yesterday; over the week it rose by $1,412. Spot is 16% above it (what the flip is).
The price of fear. On the weekly window the premium is +0.6 (IV34.8 against the actual weekly HV34.2) against zero yesterday.
Changing of the guard. Over the week the whales assembled 348 confirmed structures: 122 bullish, 135 bearish, 26 on volatility, 65 on range.
🔒CROSS-CHECK IN DETAIL 💠
BTC levels. Everything below comes from Deribit options open interest unless stated otherwise. Today's Sunday expiry holds 4,665 contracts: the market-maker break-even corridor is $83,500–$85,000, spot in its upper half (what the corridor is); max pain$84,500 on Deribit and $84,000 on the combined two-exchange open interest (what max pain is); put $84,000 (367 contracts), call $87,000 (647) (what the walls are).
Further down the calendar. Monday 28.09 — 3,782 contracts. The first notable expiry is Friday 02.10, 25,837. Friday 30.10 — max pain$74,000 and a call wall at $95,000 on 23,299 contracts.
ETH levels. Today's expiry: corridor $2,660–$2,740, max pain$2,700 on Deribit and $2,690 on the combined open interest, put $2,680 (3,077), call $3,100 (3,077).
Fuel. Under BTC within 5% of the market ($80,245–84,468) — $31.5M of long positions against $162.7M yesterday, $14.3M of them in the nearest 2%. The main mass now sits lower: $166.3M lies 5–10% below the market, and that is where the liquidation lines of both large 40× longs are. Above the market $22.1M of shorts within 5%, $18.4M of them in the nearest 2% — mostly the 40× short. In ETH$28.3M below the market against $2.8M 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 gamma is dense above spot; below, it is empty 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 stays under the call wall, and the ceiling holds.
OI flow.BTC put/call across all expiries: month 0.59 · week 0.56 · now 0.52, same as yesterday. ETH0.57 · 0.52 · 0.56 (what put/call is).
Two options venues. On the same expiries up to 30 days BTC put/call is 1.05 on Deribit against 1.12 on Bybit; ETH 1.08 against 0.92.
IV by tenor.BTC 2d P25/C26 · 5d P32/C31 · 33d P35/C34, percentiles since February 11th, 9th and 11th. ETH 2d P38/C38 · 5d P42/C43 · 33d P49/C49, percentiles 16th, 8th and 16th. ETHDVOL48.7 against 30-day realised HV41.1 — a premium of +7.6: ether overpays for insurance noticeably more than bitcoin (what the premium is).
💎SCENARIOS IN DETAIL 💠
The code's verdicts. No scenario closed over the day. Three scenarios from 25.09 reach their deadline today at 06:34 UTC, already after this snapshot — we'll show their verdict tomorrow. Three from 26.09 run until tomorrow morning, Monday 28.09.
The all-time tally (N counts only those that reached a verdict): squeeze up through the short fuel — 12 of 27, 9 more cancelled at their level; corridor — 12 of 27 plus 6 partial, 5 more cancelled; slide into the long fuel — 7 of 15, 10 more cancelled. The directional types are still no better than a coin toss.
The corridor holds — 50%. ⏱ 2 days, to Tuesday 29.09. BTC stays between the near zone of long fuel and the 40× short's liquidation line: $82,750–$85,650. Cancellation level: a touch of $80,250 — the upper edge of the dense band of long fuel.
Slide into the long fuel — 30%. ⏱ 2 days, to Tuesday 29.09. Trigger: a touch of $82,750 — an exit beyond the nearest 2% toward the long fuel. Cancellation level: a touch of $85,650.
Squeeze up through the short fuel — 20%. ⏱ 2 days, to Tuesday 29.09. Trigger: a touch of $85,650 — the 40× short's liquidation line; above it there is almost no short fuel. Cancellation level: a touch of $82,750.
This is how we weigh the odds — not a promise; the code will compute the verdict from spot history.
🔭WHAT TO WATCH
• The 40× short about 1.5% above the market — the large position closest to its liquidation line (🔬).
• Monday 28.09: the funds reopen after a week in which the daily inflow shrank every day (💠).
• Friday 02.10: the first notable expiry after the quarterly (💠).
🆓TAIL
📊POLYGON
(our own signals at real prices, not a backtest)
⚙️Pendulum · Wheel(the best of four variants, a live curve at real prices)
+$124 on the day · +$9,735 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 454%−$1,125+$83,969 21.03
Dust Strategy V1 368%−$1,125+$31,406 20.03
Volatility Convergence V3 3142%+$915+$13,355 26.05
Skew 2.0 V2 4436%−$780+$9,682 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 not a single trade closed in the top five. The most profitable signal wins only 4% of its 45 trades. Win rate isn't money.
📅PUBLIC LEDGER
(computed by code at the settlement price)
The market-maker corridor. Across 406 expiries since February the market-maker break-even corridor held the settlement price 331 times — 82%. Saturday's expiry held in both assets. 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 143 of those same 406 expiries, 35%. On Saturday ETH matched, while BTC was 2.3% off. Decision: we don't chase max pain.
The walls. The call wall held the settlement in 69 of 145 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: 858 closed cases (5 of them from Bybit), −$19.32M in total for the whales; unchanged over the weekend. Decision: win rate isn't money, and we don't copy whale structures — we track where they stand.
Whale positions on perps. For a second day we count the day's change only on a constant set of addresses. Decision: the sum over the whole registry is a level, not a move; we call a position "new" only after checking the address's trade history.
Polygon. Pendulum +$9,735 since 11.05 with +$124 on the day — both numbers from one series, the live curve of the best of four variants. 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 — 79 out of 100, same as 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 — 11th percentile of the hourly history since February, five-day — 9th, thirty-three days out — 11th: insurance is cheaper than usual, but no longer at a record low.
• Which way protection tilts.BTCskew+2.0: puts are dearer than calls — yesterday it was the other way round, −0.8. 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.