BTC's 79500 Call OI Swells 20x While the Taker Tape Shrugs

BTC-2NOV26-79500-C, a 1-DTE call sitting roughly 2.1% out of the money with spot at $77,857, has been one of the more active strikes on the board this week. Open interest crept from near-zero on Oct 29 to 74.5 contracts now, including a +15.4 contract build in the last 24 hours alone. Yet the taker tape over that same 24h window shows no directional footprint: 28 trades, $1,464 total premium, net premium of just $172, and a buyerAggression ratio of 0.56 — effectively balanced, no block trades recorded.

Compare that to the 78500 strike on the same expiry, where 97 taker trades drove $92,364 in net premium at 0.98 buyerAggression — unmistakably real, aggressive buying. The 79500 build, by contrast, carries none of those fingerprints, pointing toward dealer-side inventory shuffling rather than directional conviction.

Strike	24h OI Δ (contracts)	Trades	Net Premium	Buyer Aggression
78000C	+7	19	$194	0.54
78500C	+550.5	97	$92,364	0.98
79500C	+15.4	28	$172	0.56

The expiry's max pain sits at $78,000, gamma flip at $76,573, with gexTotal negative — dealers are short gamma above flip.