At a glance

  • Arthur Hayes said on X on Saturday that his family office, Maelstrom, had sold its directional book, taking profits on ETH, ENA, UNI and other tokens.
  • On-chain trackers Lookonchain and EmberCN, which follow wallets they link to Hayes, put the sales at $22.3 million and $26.1 million respectively.

Arthur Hayes, the co-founder of the BitMEX exchange, said Maelstrom had sold all the positions in its directional book, according to a post on X at 06:18 UTC on Saturday.

“I dumped it all,” Hayes wrote. A directional book is a set of trades that profit only if prices move one way, in this case up.

What he said

Hayes said Maelstrom had taken profits on ether (ETH), Ethena’s ENA and Uniswap’s UNI, along with other tokens he did not name. “I think we gotta go down to go up,” he wrote. He did not give sale prices, sizes or dates in the post.

What the trackers saw

Lookonchain, an on-chain analytics account, posted at 06:14 UTC, four minutes before Hayes, that wallets it attributes to him had sold $22.28 million of tokens. Its list included 6,400 ETH worth about $15.2 million, 14 million ENA, 323,000 UNI and 1.89 million ETHFI, plus smaller amounts of AERO, PENDLE and ZAMA.

EmberCN, another tracker, put the total at $26.08 million at 08:49 UTC, including 8,000 ETH. Neither Hayes nor Maelstrom has confirmed the wallets or the figures, and CryptoWatchDesk has not independently traced them.

Context

Nine days earlier, on 15 Oct, Hayes posted “Long $BTC $ETH”. As CryptoWatchDesk reported on Saturday morning, bitcoin slipped below $81,000 after the US close on Friday; its low of $80,305 on Kraken in the 09:00 UTC hour on Saturday was the lowest since 15 Oct, Kraken data show. UNI has been weak for longer; our 18 Oct report on new CME futures noted UNI’s slide of about 30% since the exchange announced the contracts.

ETH was trading at $2,363.86 as of 09:55 UTC, according to CoinGecko, down 1.3% over 24 hours. ENA was at $0.1896 and UNI at $6.81, down 4.6% and 4.9% over the same period.

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This article is for information only and is not investment advice.