Report archive · 28.09.2026

INDICIA Radar

Case No. 20260928 · 28.09.2026

The short tilt jumped by $95M overnightmore than half of it is one address that is long ether by the same amount.

Case #20260928 · 28.09.2026 04:43 UTC · BTC $83,466 / ETH $2,659 · analysis: Opus 5.5 by Anthropic

📅YESTERDAY

Sunday's 27.09 expiry settled at 08:00 UTC: BTC $84,604, ETH $2,712. The market-maker break-even corridor held in both assets for a fifth day running, and in both the settlement matched max pain — gaps of 0.7% and 0.4%.

The registry took in six new cases; the closed tally is unchanged at 858.

⚡THE GIST

• The whales' short tilt in bitcoin is growing again, and at the fastest pace in four days: +$95M over the day on a constant set of 145 addresses. But more than half of it is one address that opened a bitcoin short paired with an ether long of the same size; without it the tilt grew by $41M, mainly because longs exited.

• Among the new shorts is a wallet that held a 35× long until 25.09: over the day it built a large long once more, closed it at a loss and flipped short.

• BTC funding on Hyperliquid has been negative for the last two hours — shorts have started paying longs.

• The funds reopen today after a week of $2.39B inflow into BTC ETFs; the daily inflow shrank every day.

• Verdict — break ⚡: yesterday's pause is over and the short tilt is growing again, but the witnesses are weak so far.

• 📊 Our Polygon — Pendulum: the best of four variants, +$85 on the day, +$9,820 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. We measure the day's change on a constant set of addresses — those present in both yesterday's snapshot and today's at 04:16 UTC (how we track whale positions). Today there are 145.
In BTC on this set the short side grew by $68M and the long side shrank by $27M: the short tilt moved by +$95M. The largest contribution comes from one address that opened a low-leverage bitcoin short and holds an ether long of the same size — an "ether against bitcoin" position, not one on the market falling.
Without that address, shorts added only $13M while longs exited by $27M, a tilt of +$41M. In ETH the tilt grew too, by $25M.
Across the whole registry the sum today is: BTC long $250M against a short of $643M, ETH $425M against $806M.
Overleveraged whales number 69 against 68 yesterday, $1.09B of positions together, 70% of them longs against 72%. Two are near a margin call, against one yesterday.

Arena two — Deribit options. After a quiet weekend the blocks are back.
Over two days 14 structures were recognised in bitcoin against 8 yesterday; the most visible is a position on a fall, although most of the other new cases are positioned for a rise. In ether — two positions on a big move either way.
Quiet accumulation outside the blocks has turned mixed in bitcoin (what a block is): October calls are being gathered both deep in the money and above the market, and puts have appeared alongside. In ether the picture has flipped: over the week puts near the market and below were gathered — spread across eleven to thirteen expiries.

Arena three — money at the exchange border. The snapshot is fresh — up to this morning.
Over seven days $169.3M was brought into the exchange and $91.4M taken out. The bulk is USDC cash via the bridge: $128.4M in against $58.7M out.
Bitcoin, unlike the three previous days, came in more than it went out: $19.2M against $14.2M, and $15.2M of that inflow arrived from Binance addresses. Ether kept being taken out: $10.3M out against $2.1M 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.
There is no new data yet: 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. Today's session starts after this snapshot.
This camp is silent: there are no fresh numbers yet.

What the options market says. This camp measures one thing: what insurance costs on Deribit.
BTC skew +0.6 against +2.0 yesterday: puts are still dearer than calls, but the extra paid for them has shrunk (what skew is). In ETH +0.2 against −0.3.
Insurance is getting dearer for a second day: BTC two-day vol sits in the 29th percentile since February against the 11th yesterday, DVOL 35.6 against 34.9 (what implied vol is).
Our fear-and-greed index stands at 79 out of 100, same as yesterday.
This camp is mixed: short-dated protection is getting dearer and the most visible block is on a fall, but the extra paid for puts has shrunk and most of the new cases are positioned for a rise.

What the futures say. This camp measures who pays whom to hold a position.
BTC funding on Hyperliquid has been negative for the last two hours — from −0.005% to −0.008% in eight-hour terms, with −0.006% forecast for the next hour — against the venue's base rate of +0.010% that still stood yesterday. The average over the last eight hours is still positive (what funding is).
On Binance BTC funding is −0.002% against +0.005%. In ETH +0.010% on Hyperliquid and −0.001% on Binance.
This camp cautiously sides with the whales: shorts have started paying longs, but only for two hours so far.

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 57% yesterday; in ETH 68% against 67%.
This camp is silent: the crowd moved by a point; it is the whales who are widening the gap.

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 $172k was liquidated, almost all of it longs — 4% of the week's volume.
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 51.9 out of 100. The coin list has changed again — 235 alts against 225 yesterday; on today's list yesterday's value is 51.1, so over the day the index rose 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 46.3% — $5.89B of $12.71B, against 45.6% yesterday.

Alt contracts with funding hotter than bitcoin's make up 86% of open interest against 66% yesterday — mainly because bitcoin's own funding on Bybit turned negative, which lowered the bar.

Retail in the top-10 coins stands 68.8% long; the hottest are DOGE and XRP at 77–78%.

Whales in alts are structurally short: 30.9% long across $1.80B of positions, the biggest of them HYPE. That gap itself is permanent, the signal is in its CHANGE — over the day the whales' long share fell by 0.6 points.

Full barometer: indiciadesk.com/en/altseason

⚖️VERDICT OF THE DAY

break ⚡ — the pause is over: on a constant set of addresses the whales' short tilt in bitcoin is growing again, +$95M over the day after −$8M the day before. Witnesses: futures cautiously side with the whales; options are mixed; the funds have no fresh data, the crowd and stress are silent.

What this does NOT mean. This is not a claim that the market will go down. More than half of the increase is one pair — an ether long against a bitcoin short — and without it the tilt grew mainly because longs exited, not because anyone opened shorts en masse. The long fuel under the market is dense again, but two whales near a margin call are not yet a cascade. And the funds, which bought all last week, haven't held their first session of this week yet.

🔒In today's full RADAR:

— the address that opened a bitcoin short paired with an equal ether long: sizes, leverage, liquidation lines — and a correction to our 26.09 radar;

— a case that makes money only on a sharp jump up, and the price at which it loses the most.

ANALYST access → indiciadesk.com/en/agent

💎DEEP

🔒WHALES IN DETAIL 💠

Portraits from the Hyperliquid registry, snapshot 04:16 UTC at BTC $83,356 and ETH $2,653; the addresses' trade history was checked via the exchange's public API. Nicknames aren't treated as identification.

The market's biggest loss. ETH SHORT $277.3M, leverage 5×, entry $2,304, uPnL −$36.5M, liquidation at $4,269 — 61% above spot.
The same address in BTC. SHORT $235.5M, entry $75,949, uPnL −$20.9M, liquidation at $143,648 (+72%).
A second address with the same pattern. BTC SHORT $145.8M and ETH SHORT $205.8M, both at 5×, uPnL −$15.6M and −$24.4M. Together the two addresses carry $97.4M of unrealised loss against $111.2M yesterday — price moved their way. Their $381M is 59% of the bitcoin short side across the whole registry against 70% yesterday: the share fell because new shorts appeared around them.
The new 4× short — one half of a pair. BTC SHORT $54.2M from $84,057, opened today between 00:56 and 01:01 UTC, uPnL +$455k, liquidation at $127,138 (+53%). Since yesterday the same address has held ETH LONG $53.1M at 4× from $1,936. Net exposure is close to zero: this is an "ether against bitcoin" position, not one on the market falling.
The wallet of the former 35× long. Since yesterday morning, by its trades, the address built a long once more, up to 610 BTC — about $51M — closed it at a loss of ≈$0.77M including fees, and at 02:03 UTC flipped short: now SHORT $15.2M at 22× from $83,461, liquidation at $86,222 (+3.4%). Not a single liquidation trade. Part of the day's loss was offset by a gain on NEAR — about $0.43M.
Correction to the 26.09 radar. We wrote that on 25.09 this address's account shrank from $2.4M to $0.39M, that is, by ~$2M on trading. That was wrong: $0.39M is only the perp part of the exchange's single account. The whole account fell over that day from ~$2.3M to ~$1.0M, by $1.3M; by its trades on 25.09 the bitcoin result was −$0.95M plus $0.09M of fees. From now on we take an address's account from the full account state, not from the perp margin field.
The large 40× long. BTC LONG $97.5M from $83,823, uPnL −$546k, liquidation at $80,509 — 3.4% below spot against 5.6% yesterday: as price fell, the line drew close again.
The ether longs. The market's biggest gain is ETH LONG $80.3M at 20× from $2,134, uPnL +$15.7M. The 10× long from $2,694 at $109.4M is now $1.7M in the red, liquidation at $2,518 (−5%). The 25× long — $95.1M from $2,671, topped up by 2,800 ETH over the day, liquidation at $2,554 — only 3.7% below spot.

Cases in the registry — six new over the day.
Case #1135 · BTC put backspread: 400 puts at $84,000 bought for Wednesday 30.09 and 200 puts at $86,000 sold for Friday 02.10, entered at $83,320, net premium ≈1.64 BTC received (≈$137k). The legs sit on different expiries: the bought puts expire on Wednesday, the sold one on Friday, and it is already in the money — so near the current price the position is in the red. It makes money if price is below ~$82,700 on Wednesday and doesn't fall much deeper by Friday; if price is above $86,000 on Friday, the premium stays. A fall that runs on into Friday would cost the whale more: after Wednesday the sold put is uncovered. We don't draw payoff charts for legs on different expiries yet. The largest of the new cases.
Case #1139 · BTC call backspread: 20 calls at $83,000 sold and 100 calls at $102,000 bought, expiry Friday 30.10.2026, entered at $83,320, premium ≈0.66 BTC received (≈$55k). The opposite view: below $83,000 the whale keeps the premium, between the strikes it loses — the most, up to ~$325k, at $102,000 — and it makes money only on a jump above ~$106,000.

Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-10-30. Кит отримав $55k премії. Беззбитковість: $85 766 і $106 058.

Case #1136 · ETH risk reversal: 200 puts at $2,450 sold and 100 calls at $2,700 bought, expiry Friday 02.10, entered at $2,651, premium ≈0.78 ETH paid. A rise in ether by Friday, funded by selling protection: two puts sold for each call bought, so a fall below $2,450 costs double.

Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-10-02. Кит заплатив $2k премії. Беззбитковість: $2 721.

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, premium ≈9.61 BTC received (≈$729k), day thirteen. From the $75,860 entry spot has moved 10.0% against this position.

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, net premium ≈1.5 BTC paid (≈$119k). Spot has slipped below the bought strike: the position starts making money only above ~$87,400.

Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-10-30. Кит заплатив $119k премії. Беззбитковість: $87 387.

Case #1140 · BTC bull call spread: 12.5 calls at $95,000 bought and 12.5 calls at $100,000 sold, expiry Friday 25.12.2026, entered at $83,320, premium ≈0.14 BTC paid (≈$12k). A small but clean position on a rise: it makes money above ~$95,900 and the most at $100,000.

Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-12-25. Кит заплатив $12k премії. Беззбитковість: $95 925.

Also new: #1137 — a diagonal on $91,000/$98,000 calls across November–December; #1138 — a short diagonal on $84,000/$85,000 calls with a leg expiring today.
ΔOI over the week: BTC: +5,747 calls at $70,000 (88% of it in 30.10), +5,428 calls at $90,000, +4,613 puts at $88,000 (87% in 30.10 and 02.10). ETH — puts only: +15,069 at $2,700, +12,468 at $2,500, +9,957 at $2,600.

🔬Who exactly

Both of the biggest shorts are Abraxas Capital Mgmt (Heka Funds): over the day the house's positions barely changed; unrealised loss $97.4M.

An address labelled Fasanara Capital raised its BTC SHORT to $37.8M at 30× against $27.5M yesterday, and its ETH SHORT to $65.6M.

Machi Big Brother — the 25× ether long 3.7% from its liquidation line; over the day he halved his BTC LONG, from $33.7M to $16.7M.

The new 4× short, the wallet of the former 35× long and the 40× long are addresses without a public label.

Money by address. Over seven days $8.5M of bitcoin out of $14.2M of total BTC outflow went to addresses of Wintermute, and $7.9M of ether out of $10.3M.

🔒THE WEEK'S DYNAMICS 🔬

Perps on a constant set of addresses. Since yesterday the shifts are computed automatically, only on addresses present in both snapshots. BTC: over 7 days $50M into the short on 120 addresses; over the day $95M into the short. ETH: over 7 days $26M into the short, over the day $25M. Over the week 17 wallets entered the sample with longs of $119M and shorts of $46M, and 14 dropped out — with longs of $203M and shorts of $99M; they aren't part of the shift.

Gamma flip. BTC across all expiries $72,909 against $72,521 yesterday, spot 14% above it (what the flip is). ETH — $2,625, only 1.3% below spot: on a 2% fall in ether the dealers switch from damping the move to amplifying it.

The price of fear. On the weekly window the premium is +1.7 (IV 35.6 against the actual weekly HV 33.9) against +0.6 yesterday.

Changing of the guard. Over the week the whales assembled 287 confirmed structures: 89 bullish, 115 bearish, 27 on volatility, 56 on range.

🔒CROSS-CHECK IN DETAIL 💠

BTC levels. Everything below comes from Deribit options open interest unless stated otherwise. Today's Monday expiry holds 4,384 contracts: the market-maker break-even corridor is $83,000–$85,500, spot in its lower part (what the corridor is); max pain $84,000 on both exchanges (what max pain is); put $84,000 (303 contracts), call $86,000 (613) (what the walls are).

Further down the calendar. Tuesday 29.09 — 2,669, Wednesday 30.09 — 2,341, Friday 02.10 — 26,460 contracts. Friday 30.10 — max pain $74,000 and a call wall at $95,000 on 23,350 contracts.

ETH levels. Today's expiry: 35,431 contracts, corridor $2,640–$2,720, max pain $2,680, put $2,600 (5,181), call $2,760 (1,661).

Fuel. Under BTC within 5% of the market ($79,188–83,356) there is again $120.7M of long positions against $31.5M yesterday, only $9.2M of them in the nearest 2%: with the fall in price, the liquidation line of the largest 40× long came back into the five-percent band. Above the market $42.6M of shorts within 5%, $4.5M of them in the nearest 2%. In ETH $126.8M below the market against $4.5M 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 $77,000–$78,000.

Stress test ±2%. In BTC both directions stay in the zone where dealers damp the move. In ETH a 2% fall breaks through the gamma flip, and the dealers start amplifying the move.

OI flow. BTC put/call across all expiries: month 0.53 · week 0.56 · now 0.52. ETH 0.53 · 0.53 · 0.55 (what put/call is).

Two options venues. On the same expiries up to 30 days BTC put/call is 1.07 on Deribit against 0.94 on Bybit; ETH 1.11 against 0.82.

IV by tenor. BTC 2d P32/C33 · 4d P34/C34 · 32d P36/C35, percentiles since February 29th, 20th and 15th. ETH 2d P43/C43 · 4d P43/C44 · 32d P49/C49, percentiles 26th, 11th and 19th. ETH DVOL 49.7 against 30-day realised HV 41.6 — a premium of +8.1 (what the premium is).

💎SCENARIOS IN DETAIL 💠

The code's verdicts. Three scenarios from 25.09 reached their deadline: the corridor was confirmed — price stayed inside the whole time; the slide into the long fuel was not confirmed — the low was $83,659 against a trigger of $82,600; the squeeze up was not confirmed — the high was $84,766 against $85,950. Three scenarios from 26.09 reach their deadline today at 06:53 UTC, already after this snapshot — we'll show their verdict tomorrow; three from 27.09 run until tomorrow morning, Tuesday 29.09.

The all-time tally (N counts only those that reached a verdict): squeeze up through the short fuel — 12 of 28, 9 more cancelled at their level; corridor — 13 of 28 plus 6 partial, 5 more cancelled; slide into the long fuel — 7 of 16, 10 more cancelled. The directional types are still no better than a coin toss.

The corridor holds — 50%. ⏱ 2 days, to Wednesday 30.09. BTC stays within the near fuel zones, up to 2% from the market: $81,700–$85,000. Cancellation level: a touch of $79,200 — the lower edge of the long fuel.

Slide into the long fuel — 30%. ⏱ 2 days, to Wednesday 30.09. Trigger: a touch of $81,700 — entry into the band holding $111.5M of long liquidations. Cancellation level: a touch of $85,000.

Squeeze up through the short fuel — 20%. ⏱ 2 days, to Wednesday 30.09. Trigger: a touch of $85,000 — entry into the band of short fuel. Cancellation level: a touch of $81,700.

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

🔭WHAT TO WATCH

• Today's session of the funds — the first after a $2.39B week (💠).

• ETH near its gamma flip: a 2% fall changes how the dealers behave (🔬).

• 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)

+$85 on the day · +$9,820 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              45    4% −$1,125  +$83,969  21.03
Dust Strategy V1              36    8% −$1,125  +$31,406  20.03
Volatility Convergence V3     31   42%   +$915  +$13,355  26.05
Skew 2.0 V2                   44   36%   −$780   +$9,682  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 weekend 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 408 expiries since February the market-maker break-even corridor held the settlement price 333 times — 82%. Sunday'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 145 of those same 408 expiries, 36%. On Sunday it matched in both assets. 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 42 of 99, 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. Decision: win rate isn't money, and we don't copy whale structures — we track where they stand.

Whale positions on perps. Since yesterday the day's change is computed automatically on a constant set of addresses. And on 26.09 we got one wallet's account wrong, taking its perp part for the whole account — the correction is in the details above. Decision: we take an address's account from the exchange's full account state.

Polygon. Pendulum +$9,820 since 11.05 with +$85 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 — 29th percentile of the hourly history since February, four-day — 20th, thirty-two days out — 15th: insurance is cheaper than usual, but it has been getting dearer for a second day.

• Which way protection tilts. BTC skew +0.6: puts are slightly dearer than calls — yesterday the extra was +2.0. 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.