Bitcoin prices traded nearly $113,000 on Monday after a weekend liquidation wiped out leveraging longs of over $1 billion, with derivatives and macro gauges at the center of the next move.
The spot pushes around $112,965, about 10% below its recent peak as the market digested last week’s Federal Reserve interest rate cuts and volatility pickup.
The reset began with futures, where it forced unleashed a long exposure that was flashed at the main venue. The weekend saw a long position of over $1.6 billion clearing, but open interest unfolded near the cycle’s highs, leaving a substantial, thin, conceptual foundation throughout Binance, Bibit and CME.
The Coinglass’ dashboard shows BTC futures, showing funds retreating and squeezing towards neutral across key Perps, and clearing heatmap clustering above and below the spot.
Options relicated shock
DeRibit analysis and Laevitas’ 25-Delta Skew data show that they trade at the premium of the short tenor call. That profile tends to increase the daple extension amplitude when the spot sits within the negative gamma pocket, then weakens when gamma becomes a positive inversion with stabilization.
The flow is not one-way. According to Farside Investors, the US Spot ETF complex recorded a rare September net spill of about $51 million on Wednesday, September 17th, with IBTC winning around $150 million, while FBTC and GBTC saw redemption. Thursday and Friday saw recovery and brought in $385 million before the weekend. This type of mixed print can reduce immediate momentum, but can maintain a medium-term bid if total inflow resumes.
The basics and terminology structure provides a Q4 health check. Cryptoquant’s CME annual base series is a proxy for carry demand from arbitrage capital, easing from high levels in mid-September, with bears seeing a sustained movement into lower teenage years, consistent with cleaner positioning. A quick re-acceleration at the base back to over 10 people will argue that leverage is being restructured into bounce.
Macros are still important in margins. The US 10-year Treasury Department hovered near the low 4% handle after the Fed’s quarterly cut, but the dollar index was locked in the new week.
According to MarketWatch’s 10-year page, the 10-year period sat at around 4.1%, with the Dolrar Index strengthening along with careful stock futures. These prints are tactical headwinds for fast upside follow-throughs, but their impact tends to be episodes when the cipher is position-driven.
These inputs result in two competing ranges mapped to visible liquidation pools and dealer positioning through path analysis to initial Q4.
Scenario A, a snapback squeeze, carries the spots from $118,000 to $124,000, a zone that overlaps with the upside clearing cluster shown in the Coinglass heat map, and the common gamma friction points around the round figure.
The trigger set includes funds pinned below flats in Green Days, mild reconstructions in full shorts, drifting into neutral skew, and stable positive ETF netflows for several sessions. These conditions convert residual open interest into fuel and upsides incrementally, and transitions to range when gamma becomes protective.
Scenario B is the second flash before recovery, looking at $104,000 to $108,000. Here, there is a risk that the liquidation density will be thicker under recent declines, and negative skew will persist and ETF flow will remain soft while 10 years and DXY is fixed.
Under that path, funds slip from neutral to negative on the red day at major venues, and implicit volatility holds bids as dealers maintain a short gamma under $115,000. This mix maintains downside path dependencies until open interest is further reduced or the option inventory flips daytime impulses.
The regulated venue location size is conveniently cross-checked.
CME’s Bitcoin futures page shows deep liquidity and consistent participation, providing references to institutional activities as September options and Futures rolls towards the quarter end.
A CME-based decline combined with stable open interest refers to carrying normalization without wholesale delaverage, while a deeper open profit draw confirms a wider reset.
Seasonality colors the base rate as October approaches. Coinglass’ monthly return table shows that October has historically provided positive median returns. Seasonality doesn’t drive the tape on its own, but when combined with a cleaner derivative stack, it could tilt the odds towards the recovery path after a sharp shock in September.
What’s important from here is whether leverage has been sufficiently neutralized to allow spot trade without reflection.
Even after the weekend’s flash, open interest remains largely and large by age-specific standards, with funds being eased, but not collapsed.
Farside’s ETF ledger remains mixed rather than one-way. Cryptoquant’s base series is located in the watch zone. Laevitas and Deribit Report Skew is in favor of Puts over Calls. This is a high priced construction that quickly turns the shorts into a green candle and flips them over.
The short-term tape then turns on positioning.
If the funds are close to zero, the ETF prints test again purely positive in several sessions, with pressure to $124,000 becoming the dominant pathway as the short gamma pocket moves higher in response to normalisation of skew.
If the treasury leaves yields and the dollar is solid, the skew remains negative and the ETF flow is wobbling, the pressure will first be built for a $108,000 check.
Traders looking at the same dashboard will quickly know which passes are realising.