A major market maker deployed $230 million into Bitcoin within a 10-hour window, accumulating 2,622 BTC at an average price around $87.6k per coin. The timing is particularly significant given that $27 billion worth of options are set to expire on December 26 on a leading derivatives platform—representing roughly half of all open interest in that market.

Here's what makes this noteworthy: once those contracts expire, market makers typically unwind their delta hedging positions on short calls. When you're holding massive short call exposure, you need to hedge by either shorting spot Bitcoin or reducing long positions. The expiration wipes out that hedging necessity in one event.

This institutional move suggests sophisticated positioning ahead of that inflection point. Nobody deploys a quarter-billion dollars into BTC without a thesis. The scale of the position, combined with the timing relative to the December 26 derivatives event, hints at confidence about post-expiry market structure and potentially looser supply-side pressure once those hedges unwind.