Bitcoin reclaimed the $79,000 level on Monday, with Watcher.Guru confirming the move as the asset built on a rally that traders have increasingly tied to expectations of expanded US Treasury liquidity support. The renewed push higher came alongside a shift in derivatives positioning that suggests the market isn't just drifting upward on spot buying alone.
Glassnode's options-market data shows 25-delta call volume has been outpacing put volume at every maturity since the breakout began, with skew — a measure of whether traders are paying more for upside or downside protection — sitting at its lowest level of the year across the curve, and flipping negative on the front end for the first time in months. In plain terms, options traders are now paying a premium for calls over puts, a positioning shift typically associated with growing conviction that the move higher has further to run rather than a top forming.
Not Everyone Is Holding On
The breakout hasn't stopped some traders from taking money off the table. Pseudonymous on-chain analyst Ai Yi reported that a large trader known as “Machi Big Brother” closed an entire BTC long position along with partial long positions in three other tokens as Bitcoin broke above $79,000, locking in $333,000 in realized profit. The same trader's remaining long exposure — roughly $94.9 million spread across ETH, HYPE, and PUMP — remains in unrealized profit territory, with paper gains exceeding $2.88 million as the trader's overall drawdown continues to narrow.
A Rally With a Macro Backbone
The timing lines up with a broader liquidity narrative building in traditional markets: the same day Bitcoin pushed through $79,000, reports emerged that the US Treasury is weighing whether to draw on its nearly $1 trillion General Account to help fund an expanded bond-buyback program, on top of buybacks it had already doubled earlier in the week. Falling Treasury yields and a friendlier liquidity backdrop have historically coincided with risk-asset rallies, and several traders explicitly framed this week's Bitcoin strength as a direct read-through from that bond-market intervention rather than a crypto-specific catalyst.
Related: Market Makers Pile Into Short Positions Even as Bitcoin Rallies
What the Options Market Is Really Saying
Skew turning negative on the front end of the curve — meaning near-term calls are now pricier than near-term puts — is a relatively rare signal; for most of the year, downside protection has commanded the premium. Combined with profit-taking from at least one visible large trader rather than a wholesale exit, the current setup reads less like blind euphoria and more like a market that's turned constructive on the trend while still actively managing risk around it.
