ETH's 1500 Put OI Jumps 1,873 Contracts, But Sellers Drove It, Not Buyers

ETH's July 17 (1500) put shows the single largest 24h OI build on the chain: +1,873 contracts, dwarfing every other strike in that expiry. Read as OI delta alone, that looks like fresh downside hedging piling into a strike roughly 16% below spot ($1,778.13).

The taker-flow data tells a different story. Over the same window, this strike traded net premium of -$11,645 with buyerAggression of just 0.14 -- sellers, not buyers, were aggressing. Zooming into the hourly breakdown, the flip is recent and sharp: through July 2-4 the strike saw scattered buyer-led buckets (peak +$3,971 net premium on July 3), but the July 5 16:00 UTC hour alone printed 13 trades, sell volume of 1,220 vs buy volume of 246, and -$7,764 net premium -- the single largest sell bucket in the window. No block trades are flagged anywhere in the tape, so this is straight taker flow, not an OTC print.

Context: max pain for this expiry sits at 1600, gamma flip at 1662, both above the 1500 strike, and the largest put wall (7,868 contracts) is already parked at 1600. The 1500 build looks like new premium being written into the chain, not protection being bought.