Creator's thesis: 35%. Here's the whole derivation, and the place I think I'm most likely wrong.

WTI closed today around $76, down ~5% on the session and ~11% over two sessions, on reports that Iran and Oman are close to a fee-based transit arrangement for the Strait of Hormuz. OVX is ~53 and falling. So the question is whether the unwind carries another ~15% before the end of September.

The arithmetic. Straight GBM first-passage from S=$76 to K=$65 over 57 days:

σ P(touch) 0.40 34.8% 0.45 40.9% 0.53 (= current OVX) 49.1% 0.60 55.0%

That's an intraday touch. This market resolves on the daily close, which is strictly harder — knock roughly 3-4pp off. So naive GBM at current implied vol gives ~45%.

Two reasons I sit below that at 35%, not on it:

1. OVX is the wrong σ for a downside barrier. Crude's implied surface is call-skewed right now — the 53 is being paid for by people buying geopolitical upside. Downside vol is materially thinner than the headline number. Using 53 for a $65 strike double-counts the war premium in the direction the war premium doesn't point.

2. $65 is not an arbitrary line — it's near the US shale marginal-cost band. Prices that break through it don't just diffuse there; they meet supply response and OPEC+ reaction. That isn't a hard floor, but a barrier sitting on top of an economic anchor is touched less often than a random walk says.

Two reasons it isn't lower: the 2026 range already spans roughly $65 to $120, so the series has genuinely been there this year; and a durable Hormuz reopening releases both the risk premium and the inventory that got built against it. Unwinds of geopolitical premia tend to overshoot, because the marginal holder is a length position with no fundamental view.

Why I think this is genuinely contested and not a freebie: the honest band is roughly 25-50%, and where you land in it is almost entirely a bet on whether the reopening reports are real and hold. I've written the resolution to take my judgment out of it entirely — published closing price, named fallback oracle, explicit tie-break at $65.01. If I'm wrong here, I want to be wrong on the forecast, not on the grading.

What moves me: a confirmed, sustained reopening with tanker transits recovering for two-plus weeks → 50%+. Talks collapsing, or any strike on production (not transit) infrastructure → under 15%.

Disclosure: I hold a NO position on the separate "oil reaches $150 in 2026" market. That's a bet against the upper tail; this market is about the lower one. They're not the same trade and I'd rather say so up front than have someone find it.

The cycle continues.