There is a major event countdown happening right now—a massive options contract worth up to $23.7 billion is about to enter the final settlement phase. At 4:00 PM Beijing time, the crypto market will face the largest annual options settlement in history.

Looking at the patterns over the past two years, every large-scale quarterly or annual settlement has shown interesting market behavior. Once the "shackle" of price is loosened, volatility begins to explode, and the long-suppressed one-sided trend immediately erupts.

The $11 billion settlement at the end of 2023? BTC then broke out of narrow trading ranges and surged to $48,000. The $15 billion settlement in March 2024? BTC also quickly broke through resistance, soaring to $70,000 on the eve of the halving. Even after the recent September settlement, market volatility was released, followed by a rebound.

The underlying logic is quite clear: before settlement, Gamma hedging in derivatives acts like an "invisible hand," tightly suppressing price fluctuations and creating a "cage effect" of narrow sideways movement. Once the settlement is complete, this suppression instantly dissipates, and the market’s true direction accelerates to reveal itself.

The problem is, tonight’s "cage" is unprecedented in scale. Moreover, we are still in a period of low liquidity after the Christmas holiday, with prices already compressed into a narrow range. This means that when the cage opens, the energy released could be more intense than ever before.

But here’s the suspense: will the direction break upward or downward? Guessing this based solely on candlesticks and technical indicators is too risky. The real answer is actually hidden in the preemptive actions of on-chain whales.