Bitcoin 2026-09-13 daily brief — AI stance: bearish

Open-interest-weighted funding across venues is 0.007009% per 8 hours, about 7.67% annualized, below the roughly 11% neutral baseline and therefore subdued, not crowded. The single major venue prints 6.19% annualized, 1.49 percentage points under the aggregate, so whatever mild long lean exists sits away from that venue rather than on it. Over the past 14 days the aggregate ranged from about -0.37% to 8.98% annualized and the single venue from -0.60% to 9.75%, never touching the baseline. The 26% rally was not carried by perp longs paying up, which limits the forced-selling fuel on a break.

Market-wide BTC futures open interest is $51.2B, down from $57.7B at the Sept 3 high and $55.0B on Aug 31, an 11% deleveraging against a 5.5% price decline. Wintermute noted OI rose about 16% during the 26% rally, so this is the unwind of that added leverage rather than fresh shorting. The single large venue shows the same shape at $5.5B versus $6.2B on Sept 3. Options OI is $39.0B, down from $43.4B on Sept 4, with Sept 13 volume a weekend-light $1.07B. Funding subdued, longs being liquidated, OI falling: positioning is cleaner than on Sept 3, which caps downside acceleration but also means the rally's leverage is leaving rather than arriving.

Sept 13 saw $24.5M of longs and $6.0M of shorts liquidated (ratio 0.25, longs dominant) with total liquidations at the 20th percentile of the past year: quiet. The 14-day picture is two-phased. The Sept 3 breakout to 81,265 liquidated $189M of shorts; every day since has skewed to longs, with roughly $385M of longs versus $173M of shorts liquidated from Sept 4 through Sept 13, peaking at $85.6M and $72.8M on Sept 10 and 11 as price broke under 77,000. Late longs from the rally are being flushed on a grind, not a crash.

The Coinbase premium is -2.05 bps, neutral against a plus or minus 10 bps extreme threshold. The 14-day series has been negative on 12 of 14 days, ranging from -5.21 bps on Sept 2 to +1.80 bps on Sept 5, and has sat between -2 and -4 bps every day since Sept 8. Offshore has led US spot consistently but faintly: no US institutional bid is visible, consistent with the ETF outflow week, and no US-side panic is visible either.

CONFLICT. On-chain valuation (MVRV-Z 0.77 at the 37th percentile, reserve risk at the 10th, 3 of 8 bottom triggers) and washed-out derivatives (funding 7.67% annualized, market-wide OI down 11% from Sept 3) lean constructive. The macro tape (10-year 4.95%, Fed hike Sept 16, oil above $100) and BTC's own flow data (ETF outflows, the MSTR pause, a negative Coinbase premium) lean risk-off. The flow data show macro already transmitting into BTC demand, so the macro side is taken for this horizon.

Marginal demand has stepped back. US spot BTC ETFs saw $462.7M of net outflows last week per Farside, ending three weeks of inflows; Thursday Sept 10 at $282.7M (about 3,693 BTC, a 30-day z-score of -1.66) was the largest daily redemption since July. The 7-day average flow fell to 928 BTC on Sept 11 from 2,618 BTC on Aug 31, while the 30-day average of 1,609 BTC stays positive and September remains net positive at about $307M. Reading that as bearish is a hypothesis, not demonstrated alpha. Strategy (ticker MSTR) made no BTC purchases last week, spent $176M on STRC preferred buybacks and raised its digital-credit repurchase program to $2B, so the corporate bid is paused. The Coinbase premium has been negative on 12 of the last 14 days, offshore-led but within noise. Regulatory: the Sept 15 Senate cloture vote on the CLARITY Act needs 60 votes against 53 Republican seats, with ethics and stablecoin provisions unresolved. Miners: Puell 0.99 at the 43rd percentile and hash ribbons 0.99961 at the 15th percentile, rising every day toward the 1.0 recovery cross. Transaction count at the 99.8th percentile alongside fees at the 10th percentile is high-count, low-fee activity, not a demand read. Cycle: about 29 months past the April 2024 halving with the monitor NEUTRAL. The Sept 25 Deribit quarterly expiry (about 41.5% of BTC options OI) falls after this brief's horizon.

hawkish. Fed funds is 3.63% with CME FedWatch at roughly 86% for a 25bp hike at the Sept 16 FOMC (expected upper bound 4.00%). The 10-year is 4.95% after rising from 4.67% on Aug 31, including a 12bp jump on Sept 12; the 2-year is above 4.6%, its highest since July 2024. August CPI printed 3.4% y/y with core +0.3% m/m, and WTI settled at $102.48 on the Iran conflict. M2 growth of +5.41% y/y is the only liquidity offset. Fear & Greed at 61 (Greed) shows sentiment has not priced the tightening, which leaves room for disappointment on the dot plot.

The 10-year is 4.95%, up 28bp since Aug 31 and up 12bp on Sept 12 alone, with direction firmly higher into a Fed hike; the 2-year is above 4.6%. No credit-spread feed is supplied, so no spread read is offered. The yield move alone is a headwind for a non-yielding asset, and a break above 5.00% would be a headline level equities and BTC last reacted to in late 2023.

DXY 99.10 on Sept 11 (weekend value not supplied), down from 99.67 on Sept 1 and inside a 98.75 to 99.67 two-week range. The dollar is not confirming the 28bp rise in the 10-year, which is the less hostile version of a rates shock for BTC. It is a partial offset, not a reason to fade the rates move.

Risk-on but fraying at the leadership. The S&P 500 closed 7,657 on Sept 11, 1.2% below its Sept 3 high of 7,748, with VIX 15.84 inside a 14.3 to 17.8 two-week range and the Dow up 509 points on the CPI day. The Sept 14 session saw tech, gold and silver fall while BTC rose to 78,280, a one-day decoupling that supports BTC relative strength but is not yet a regime.

Options imply roughly a one-in-five chance of a close below 75,500 by Sept 18 on a symmetric read, since the straddle breakeven is about 0.8 sigma; the bearish view tilts that above one-in-four. First support is 75,000 (Wintermute's level, just above the Sept 18 straddle low of 75,493), then 74,113 (the Sept 25 straddle low). A break of 75,000 opens 71,100 to 71,200, about 7.4% below 76,819, where the 50-day and STH cost basis meet; that is where a grind becomes a capitulation, because 77.8% of UTXOs are in profit today and recent buyers move underwater there. Below that, 70,133 (200-day) and the 30-day low region of 62,844 (about -18%) are the tail, not the base case. Single-day moves of 5% to 7% occurred four times in the past 30 days, so a gap through 75,000 on the dot plot is a live scenario rather than a tail.

moderate implied, low recent realized. DVOL is 38.89 at the 30th percentile of the past year and 30-day ATM IV is 36.2% at the 51st percentile of 90 days, against realized vol of 19.6% over 7 days, 47.5% over 30 days and 36.3% over 90 days. The 7-day realized print is roughly half of implied, a compression that in this tape has preceded 5% to 7% single days (Aug 19, 20, 21 and Sept 3). Deribit straddles as of the Sept 14 morning price a plus or minus 1.2% move (76,583 to 78,417) by Sept 15 08:00 UTC, plus or minus 2.8% (75,823 to 80,177) by Sept 17 08:00 UTC, the first expiry after the Sept 16 FOMC decision, plus or minus 3.2% (75,493 to 80,507) by Sept 18, and plus or minus 5.0% (74,113 to 81,887) by the Sept 25 quarterly. Implied daily sigma steps from 1.59% to 2.07% for the Sept 17 expiry, so a modest FOMC premium is embedded even though the 7-day versus 30-day slope reads calm. These ranges say how far, not which way.