Three of the five biggest bitcoin longs left in a daynot one of them was liquidated.
Case #20260929 · 29.09.2026 05:40 UTC · BTC$83,094 / ETH$2,662 · analysis: Opus 5.5 by Anthropic
📅YESTERDAY
Monday's 28.09 expiry settled at 08:00 UTC: BTC$82,959, ETH$2,644. In BTC the market-maker break-even corridor failed to hold for the first time in six days — settlement came 0.05% below its lower edge; in ETH it held. Against max pain fixed a day before expiry, BTC was 1.3% off, while ETH matched — settlement within 0.6% of it.
The registry closed one case and took in six new ones; the closed tally is now 859.
⚡THE GIST
• The whales on Hyperliquid have nearly abandoned the long side of bitcoin: longs are 14% of their positions — near the bottom of our measurements, with only a few points in July lower. Across the whole registry: long $88M against short $541M.
• Over the day the biggest bitcoin long closed, and two more of the top five with it — none by liquidation: the owners left on their own, at a loss. Shorts shrank too, but less, so on the constant set of addresses the short tilt grew by another $62M.
• The "ether long against bitcoin short" pair that gave more than half of yesterday's increase has closed its bitcoin leg — only the ether long remains.
• The crowd is going the other way: 58% of BTC accounts on Bybit perps stand long against 56% yesterday.
• Verdict — continuation ⟳: the short tilt grows for a second day in a row, and this time because the big longs left.
• 📊 Our Polygon — Pendulum: the best of four variants, −$702 on the day, +$9,118 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 (how we track whale positions) — the 147 present in both snapshots at 04:16 UTC. In BTC on this set the long side shrank by $167M and the short side by $105M: both were cut, but longs faster, so the short tilt grew by $62M. In ETH it went the other way: longs added $55M, shorts $27M, and the short tilt narrowed by $28M. Across the whole registry the sum today is: BTC long $88M against a short of $541M, ETH$477M against $836M. Overleveraged whales number 69, same as yesterday, but together their positions come to $878M against $1.09B: the big longs left. Near a margin call — nobody, against two yesterday.
Arena two — Deribit options. The block market has come back to life. Over two days 56 structures were recognised in bitcoin against 14 yesterday, and the three most visible are positions on a fall. In ether — 19, among them a position on a limited rise and one on a moderate decline. Quiet accumulation outside the blocks (what a block is): in bitcoin — October calls; in ether — calls for October and beyond, with puts near the market alongside.
Arena three — money at the exchange border. The snapshot is fresh — up to this morning. Over seven days $130.4M was brought into the exchange and $125.4M taken out: net only +$5.0M against +$77.8M in yesterday's snapshot. USDC cash via the bridge, unlike the previous days, went out more than it came in: $89.8M against $85.9M. Bitcoin keeps coming in: $33.2M against $11.6M out, mostly from exchange addresses.
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 Monday $31M went into the BTC funds — the eighth session in a row with an inflow, and the smallest of them; the ETH funds took +$17M. There are no numbers for today yet. Since last Monday the daily inflow into the BTC funds has shrunk every session: $999M, $715M, $347M, $191M, $134M, $31M. The week of 22–28.09 came to +$1.42B against +$845M the week before, the 91st percentile of our measurements. This camp is weakening: the funds are still buying, but now they add almost nothing.
What the options market says. This camp measures one thing: what insurance costs on Deribit. BTCskew+0.8 against +0.6 yesterday: puts are slightly dearer than calls (what skew is). In ETH+0.2, same as yesterday. BTC two-day vol sits in the 29th percentile since February, same as yesterday; DVOL36.1 against 35.6 (what implied vol is). Our fear-and-greed index stands at 76 out of 100 against 79 yesterday. This camp is silent: puts are slightly dearer than calls, but insurance stays cheap.
What the futures say. This camp measures who pays whom to hold a position. BTC funding on Hyperliquid is +0.004% in eight-hour terms — below the venue's base rate of +0.010%. Over the day it turned negative twice, in the morning and at night, for a few hours each time, and now it is barely positive (what funding is). On Binance +0.006% against −0.002% yesterday. In ETH+0.010% and +0.009%. This camp is silent: the negative episodes are short; funding shows no steady demand for shorts.
What the crowd is doing. This camp measures how retail accounts stand against the whales. On Bybit perps 58% of BTC accounts stand long against 56% yesterday; in ETH68%, same as yesterday. This camp goes against the whales: the crowd is adding longs exactly when the whales are leaving them.
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 $1.1M was liquidated, 90% of it longs — 39% of the week's volume. This camp sides with the whales: longs are being knocked out — so far on small sums.
Again: this is positioning, not a direction forecast.
🌡ALTSEASON — the classic and our barometer
The classic altseason index stands at 45.4 out of 100. The coin list has changed again — 293 alts against 235 yesterday; on today's list yesterday's value is 45.1, so over the day the index barely moved. 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 45.9% — $5.64B of $12.30B, against 46.3% yesterday.
Alt contracts with funding hotter than bitcoin's make up 71% of open interest against 86% yesterday: bitcoin's own funding on Bybit is positive again, and the bar has risen.
Retail in the top-10 coins stands 70.0% long against 68.8% yesterday; the hottest are the gold token XAU at 80% and DOGE at 79%.
Whales in alts are structurally short: 31.0% long across $1.58B 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 barely moved.
Full barometer: indiciadesk.com/en/altseason
⚖️VERDICT OF THE DAY
continuation ⟳ — on the constant set of addresses the whales' short tilt in bitcoin grows for a second day: +$95M yesterday, +$62M today. Yesterday it was pushed by the "ether against bitcoin" pair, today by the big longs leaving. Witnesses: stress sides with the whales; the crowd goes against them; the funds are weakening; options and futures are silent.
What this does NOT mean. This is not a claim that the market will go down. The longs left on their own, with small losses, not under liquidation; almost no new shorts opened over the day — the short side even shrank. The market's biggest short — two addresses with the same pattern at 5× — didn't move and makes up most of the short side. And with the whales almost out of longs, there is hardly any long fuel of theirs under the market either.
🔒In today's full RADAR:
— how exactly the three big longs left: when, over how many minutes and with what result;
— a new case that makes money both in calm and on a very strong move, but loses on a moderate one — strikes and boundaries.
ANALYST access → indiciadesk.com/en/agent
💎DEEP
🔒WHALES IN DETAIL 💠
Portraits from the Hyperliquid registry, snapshot 04:16 UTC at BTC$83,115 and ETH$2,669; the addresses' trades were checked via the exchange's public API in 15-minute windows. Nicknames aren't treated as identification.
The 40× long that had stood since 24.09.BTC LONG $97.5M was closed on Monday 28.09 between 19:03 and 19:40 UTC — in 37 minutes, with its own orders, not a single liquidation trade. The result by its trades: −$0.54M plus $26k of fees. All that is left on the address is a ZEC long of $18.6M. The second 40× long.BTC LONG $27.1M: from 11:03 UTC on 28.09 the address was still buying, then closed from 19:38 to 22:28 UTC; the bitcoin result −$0.41M, no liquidations. On ZEC and SOL over the same day — about −$0.84M more. The address has moved into ether: now ETH LONG $26.7M at 25×. The "ether against bitcoin" pair. The address that yesterday opened BTC SHORT $54.2M against ETH LONG $53.1M has closed the bitcoin leg; ETH LONG $53.4M at 4× remains. The wallet of the former 35× long. Yesterday's BTC SHORT $15.2M is closed; what remains on the address is a NEAR short of $3.9M. The 40× short that has stood since 24.09 shrank again: 150BTC, $12.5M, liquidation at $85,690 (+3.1%). The biggest bitcoin long now. LONG $22.3M at 40× from $83,219, liquidation at $78,306 (−6%). Next to it stands a 40× short of the same size, held since last week — SHORT $22.4M from $83,209; the same address is also short ETH for $42.1M. The market's biggest loss.ETH SHORT $279.0M, leverage 5×, entry $2,304, uPnL −$38.1M, liquidation at $4,416 (+65%). The same address in BTC. SHORT $231.8M, entry $75,949, uPnL −$20.0M, liquidation at $149,151 (+79%). A second address with the same pattern.BTC SHORT $145.4M and ETH SHORT $207.1M, both at 5×, uPnL −$15.2M and −$25.7M. Together the two addresses carry $98.9M of unrealised loss against $97.4M yesterday. Their $377M is 70% of the bitcoin short side across the whole registry against 59% yesterday: other shorts shrank while these stayed put. The ether longs. The market's biggest gain is ETH LONG $80.8M at 20× from $2,134, uPnL +$16.2M. The 10× long from $2,694 at $110.0M is $1.0M in the red, liquidation at $2,519 (−6%). The 25× long — $95.2M from $2,671, liquidation at $2,579 — sits only 3.4% below spot.
Cases in the registry — six new, one closed. Case #1143 · BTC, expiry Friday 25.12.2026: 100 puts at $65,000 bought, 50 puts at $80,000 sold, 50 calls at $85,000 sold, 100 calls at $105,000 bought; entered at $83,091, net premium ≈3.7BTC received (≈$307k). Spot sits in the middle of the sold range: between $80,000 and $85,000 the whale keeps the premium in full, and within ~$73,850–$91,150 it stays in the black. Beyond that it loses — the most at $65,000 and $105,000 — and past them the doubled bought wings bring it back into profit: below ~$56,100 or above ~$118,900. The largest of the new cases.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-12-25. Кит отримав $307k премії. Беззбитковість: $56 149 і $73 851 і $91 149 і $118 851.
Case #1144 · BTC risk reversal: 50 puts at $78,000 bought and 50 calls at $90,000 sold, expiry Friday 30.10.2026, entered at $83,091, premium ≈0.09BTC paid. Protection below $78,000, funded by selling the upside above $90,000.
Case #1146 · BTC call ratio spread: 10 calls at $83,000 bought and 20 calls at $87,000 sold, expiry Friday 16.10.2026, premium ≈0.06BTC paid. A small position on a moderate rise up to $87,000; above ~$90,500 it is in the red.
Case #1139 · BTC call backspread: 20 calls at $83,000 sold and 100 calls at $102,000 bought, expiry Friday 30.10.2026, premium ≈0.66BTC received. Spot stands near the sold strike: if expiry were today, the position would keep almost all of the premium.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-10-30. Кит отримав $55k премії. Беззбитковість: $85 766 і $106 058.
Case #1081 · BTC risk reversal: a synthetic short from $69,000 for Friday 30.10.2026, premium ≈9.61BTC received, day fourteen. From the $75,860 entry spot has moved 9.5% against this position.
Профіль виплат на експірацію 2026-10-30. Кит отримав $729k премії. Беззбитковість: $76 290.
Also new: #1141 and #1142 — two diagonals on ether calls with a $2,500 call sold on the nearer expiry, ≈9.5ETH of premium received on each; #1145 — a small diagonal on $82,500/$83,000 puts for today and tomorrow, ≈0.055 BTC paid. Closed: #1138 — a short diagonal on calls, +$10k. ΔOI over the week:BTC: +6,328 calls at $90,000 (76% of it in 30.10), +5,630 calls at $70,000 (90% in 30.10), +3,109 puts at $85,000. ETH: +19,265 calls at $3,000 (63% in 09.10), +15,390 calls at $2,700, +12,271 puts 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 $98.9M.
Machi Big Brother closed a BTC LONG of $16.7M over the day with his own orders — −$0.37M and $28k of fees over the 04:16–04:16 UTC window; what remains is ETH LONG $95.2M at 25× — 3.4% from its liquidation line — and HYPE LONG $19.7M. He is the third of the big longs that left.
An address labelled Fasanara Capital holds BTC SHORT $37.5M at 30× and raised its ETH SHORT to $75.9M against $65.6M yesterday.
Both 40× longs that left, the "ether against bitcoin" pair and the 40× short next to the biggest long are addresses without a public label.
Money by address. Over seven days $6.8M of bitcoin and $4.9M of ether went to addresses of Wintermute; the largest withdrawal from the exchange — $14.1M of USDC to OKX deposit addresses; $30.5M of the incoming bitcoin arrived from Binance addresses.
🔒THE WEEK'S DYNAMICS 🔬
Perps on a constant set of addresses. Over 7 days on 127 addresses: BTC — $139M into the long, ETH — $83M into the long; over the day both assets shifted as described in the free part.
Gamma flip.BTC across all expiries $74,003 against $72,909 yesterday, spot 12% above it (what the flip is). ETH — $2,651, only 0.4% below spot: a 2% fall in ether breaks through it, and the dealers switch from damping the move to amplifying it.
The price of fear. On the weekly window the premium is +1.6 (IV36.1 against the actual weekly HV34.5) against +1.7 yesterday.
Changing of the guard. Over the week the whales assembled 272 confirmed structures: 81 bullish, 119 bearish, 20 on volatility, 52 on range.
🔒CROSS-CHECK IN DETAIL 💠
BTC levels. Everything below comes from Deribit options open interest unless stated otherwise. Today's Tuesday expiry holds 4,752 contracts: the market-maker break-even corridor is $82,500–$85,500, spot in its lower part (what the corridor is); max pain$84,000 on Deribit and $83,500 across the combined open interest of the two exchanges (what max pain is); put $83,000 (377 contracts), call $85,000 (658) (what the walls are).
Further down the calendar. Wednesday 30.09 — 5,458 contracts, Friday 02.10 — 27,142. Friday 30.10 — max pain$74,000 and a call wall at $95,000 on 23,351 contracts.
ETH levels. Today's expiry: corridor $2,640–$2,720, max pain$2,680 on Deribit and $2,660 across the combined open interest, put $2,600 (5,434), call $2,700 (4,271).
Fuel. Under BTC within 5% of the market ($78,959–83,115) only $15.3M of long positions remain against $120.7M yesterday: the largest long left — and took $97.5M out of this band with it. Above the market there are $19.0M of shorts within 5%. In ETH it's the opposite, and dense: $157.1M of longs within 5% below the market against $1.8M of shorts 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 lands right above dense long fuel.
OI flow.BTC put/call across all expiries: month 0.56 · week 0.57 · now 0.53. ETH0.55 · 0.53 · 0.54 (what put/call is).
Two options venues. On the same expiries up to 30 days BTC put/call is 1.11 on Deribit against 1.01 on Bybit; ETH0.98 against 0.77.
IV by tenor.BTC 2d P33/C32 · 10d P35/C34 · 31d P36/C35, percentiles since February 29th, 19th and 20th. ETH 2d P49/C46 · 10d P48/C49 · 31d P50/C50, percentiles 40th, 31st and 21st. ETHDVOL50.1 against 30-day realised HV41.6 — a premium of +8.5 (what the premium is).
💎SCENARIOS IN DETAIL 💠
The code's verdicts. Three scenarios from 26.09: the corridor was confirmed — price stayed inside the whole time; the slide into the long fuel was not confirmed — the low was $83,077 against a trigger of $82,250; the squeeze up was not confirmed — the high was $84,900 against $85,600. Three from 27.09: the corridor was confirmed — price stayed inside 96% of the time; the slide was confirmed — the low was $82,584 against a trigger of $82,750; the squeeze up was cancelled at its level. Three from 28.09 run until tomorrow morning, Wednesday 30.09.
The all-time tally (N counts only those that reached a verdict): squeeze up through the short fuel — 12 of 29, 10 more cancelled at their level; corridor — 15 of 30 plus 6 partial, 5 more cancelled; slide into the long fuel — 8 of 18, 10 more cancelled. The directional types are still no better than a coin toss.
The corridor holds — 50%. ⏱ 2 days, to Thursday 01.10. BTC stays within the near fuel zones, up to 2% from the market: $81,450–$84,800. Cancellation level: a touch of $78,950 — the lower edge of the five-percent zone.
Slide into the long fuel — 30%. ⏱ 2 days, to Thursday 01.10. Trigger: a touch of $81,450 — an exit below the near 2%. Cancellation level: a touch of $84,800.
Squeeze up through the short fuel — 20%. ⏱ 2 days, to Thursday 01.10. Trigger: a touch of $84,800 — entry into the band of short fuel. Cancellation level: a touch of $81,450.
This is how we weigh the odds — not a promise; the code will compute the verdict from spot history.
🔭WHAT TO WATCH
• Whales without longs, the crowd in longs: the whales' long share is 14% against 58% for the crowd (🔬).
• ETH at its gamma flip: 2% down, and the dealers amplify the move right above dense long fuel (💠).
• 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)
−$702 on the day · +$9,118 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, while the Pendulum gave back −$702 — its biggest daily loss of the week. 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 410 expiries since February the market-maker break-even corridor held the settlement price 334 times — 81%. Monday's BTC expiry went 0.05% below its lower edge — the first exit from the corridor after five days in a row inside it. Decision: we lean on the corridor knowing that roughly one expiry in five it doesn't hold — yesterday was one of those.
Max pain. An exact match with the settlement in 146 of those same 410 expiries, 36%. On Monday ETH matched, while BTC was 1.3% 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 42 of 100, 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: 859 closed cases (5 of them from Bybit), −$19.31M in total for the whales. Decision: win rate isn't money, and we don't copy whale structures — we track where they stand.
Polygon. Pendulum +$9,118 since 11.05 with −$702 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 — 76 out of 100 against 79 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, ten-day — 19th, thirty-one days out — 20th: insurance is cheaper than usual.
• Which way protection tilts.BTCskew+0.8: puts are slightly dearer than calls — yesterday the extra 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.