Bitcoin 2026-09-07 daily brief — AI stance: bullish

Market-wide, open-interest-weighted funding annualises to 2.42%/yr; the single major venue prints 1.09%/yr. Both sit far below the roughly 11%/yr exchange-default neutral rate, so longs are paying almost nothing to hold and leverage is subdued rather than crowded. Two weeks ago the OI-weighted figure was 10.4%/yr (08-28) and it has decayed steadily while price held the range. The 1.33pp gap between the venue and the aggregate means that venue runs cooler than the market as a whole; what little long bias exists sits elsewhere, mostly offshore.

Aggregate futures open interest $53.0B, down 8% from $57.7B on 09-03 and below the $55.9B of 08-25 while price is flat, so net deleveraging. Options open interest $40.5B after the 08-28 monthly expiry took it from $45.1B to $38.1B; options volume $1.37B on 09-07 versus $7.2B on 09-04. Positioning is light: a break of the 77.0-81.1k range in either direction has little leverage to squeeze, so follow-through will depend on spot, and the ±5.1% straddle to 09-18 is cheap against 48% realised.

09-07: $21.6M of longs versus $5.0M of shorts liquidated (ratio 0.23), with the total at the 17th percentile of the past year, so quiet. The rally days were short squeezes ($175M of shorts on 08-25, $189M on 09-03). Since 09-03 the pattern has flipped to longs being taken out ($80M on 09-04, $21.6M on 09-07) while price holds the range: weak longs shaken out without a breakdown, which is what a spot-held consolidation looks like.

Coinbase premium -0.34 bps: neutral. Over the last 14 sessions it was negative on 9, troughing at -5.21 bps on 09-02 and -4.22 bps on 09-03 (the record ETF inflow day), then +1.80 bps on 09-05 and -0.34 bps on 09-07. Every reading sits inside the ±10 bps normal band, so this is a mild offshore lead, not regional de-risking. The ETF creations are not showing up as a Coinbase bid: US buyers are taking supply at the offer rather than paying up, which caps upside momentum but is a long way from the absent US demand described in the 08-16 brief at 62,837.

CONFLICT. The macro tape (10-year at 4.77%, Brent heading toward $100 on US-Iran strikes, a hike being priced for 09-16) points down; the on-chain and flow tape (ETF absorption at 4-5x issuance, OI-weighted funding 2.4%/yr, 0/8 top indicators, MVRV-Z at the 40th percentile) points up. I side with the local tape: BTC gained 5.2% on 09-03 and drew its largest ETF inflow since January on the very day the 10-year hit 4.79%, so this market has already demonstrated it absorbs this macro.

Demand: US spot ETFs took $731M on 09-03 (largest single day since 01-14) and about $987M for the week to 09-05; the 30-day average inflow of 1,915 BTC/day on 09-04 is 4-5x daily miner issuance. Strategy resumed buying (4,600 BTC at about $80.3k) after a 10-week pause. Supply: long-term-holder SOPR printed 1.39, 1.33 and 1.12 on 09-05, 09-06 and 09-07, so the strongest hands are realising into strength, and 5-year-plus coin spending has doubled since May; short-term-holder whale unrealised profit hit a record $9.07B on 09-04. Miners: the hash-ribbons ratio has risen 14 straight days to 0.998, the recovery buy signal, with Puell at 0.93. Regulatory: the CLARITY Act cloture vote on 09-15 needs 60 votes with 53 Republican seats; SEC Regulation Crypto Assets comments run to 10-20. The Liquid Network incident (4,000 BTC drained, 3,400 returned) did not touch the base layer. Repeated rejection at 82,000 (82,283 intraday on 09-03) is the ceiling of the rally from the 08-07 low.

hawkish. Fed funds 3.63% with the 10-year at 4.77% (4.64% on 08-27, 4.79% on 09-03 and 09-04, a 20-month high), a 114bp term spread that is bear-steepening on oil and a 162k August payroll print against a 53k consensus. Chair Warsh's remarks were read as hawkish and pricing is split between a hold and a 25bp hike on 09-16 (blackout 09-05 to 09-17); Governor Waller alone has signalled a hold if the next two weeks of data cooperate. M2 is still growing 5.41% y/y, so the quantity of money is not contracting even as its price rises. The live sentiment gauge is 71 (Greed): elevated, short of the 80-plus extreme.

10-year 4.77%, up 13bp in ten sessions to a 20-month high, curve steepening against a 3.63% policy rate. Direction is up, and the 09-11 CPI (July was +0.1% m/m, 3.4% y/y) with August's oil move inside it is the next mover. There is no credit-spread feed in this snapshot, so no credit read is offered.

DXY 99.16 on 09-04, inside a flat 98.9-99.7 two-week band (no 09-05 to 09-07 print). The dollar has not confirmed the yield spike. A hawkish repricing without dollar strength is the least damaging version of this macro for BTC and removes the usual FX headwind from the bear case.

Risk-on. S&P 500 at 7,718.6 on 09-04, 0.4% below its 09-03 print of 7,747.7; VIX 15.3 inside a 14.3-16.3 two-week range. Equities are treating 20-month-high yields as a growth signal, not a liquidity shock.

Using the straddle breakevens (each about 0.8 sigma), the options market implies roughly one-in-five odds of closing below 76,066 by 09-12 and below 74,995 by 09-18. First support is the 77,000-77,240 range floor (09-01 and 09-02 closes). Below it there is little structure until the short-term-holder cost basis near 70,900 (price divided by the 1.113 short-term-holder MVRV), which sits on the 50/200-day pair at 69,663/69,815: a 10-11% drawdown, about 1.6 sigma on the 09-18 tenor, mid-single-digit probability inside the horizon. The 90-day low of 58,519 (-26%) is not in play absent a macro accident.

moderate. DVOL 38.8 at the 30th percentile of the past year; 30-day ATM IV 36.5% (54th percentile of 90 days) and up 1.5 points in 5 days. Realised vol runs 10-12 points above implied (46.7% 7-day, 48.2% 30-day), and 7-day IV sits 2.4 points above 30-day, so the week containing PPI and CPI is priced rougher than the month. The options market's own range forecast: plus or minus 1.1% (77,656-79,344) by 08:00 UTC on 09-09, plus or minus 3.1% (76,066-80,934) by 09-12, and plus or minus 5.1% (74,995-83,005) by 09-18, the first expiry after the FOMC.