Since January 21, in the East 8 Time Zone, a single address has been continuously accumulating ETH in the secondary market with the market-making institution Wintermute, buying approximately 70,013 ETH in batches, equivalent to about 204 million USD at the time. According to on-chain data, the latest large purchase occurred about 12 hours ago, with a single buy of 20,000 ETH, amounting to approximately 56.13 million USD, indicating strong support during the short-term correction phase. With an average cost of 2,907 USD monitored by on-chain analysts, a latest purchase price of 2,806 USD, and a current floating profit of about 2.1 million USD, this account has formed a considerable safety cushion within the recent volatile range of ETH prices. In stark contrast, last week saw a net outflow of funds from digital asset products totaling 1.73 billion USD, particularly with the U.S. market experiencing a withdrawal of 1.8 billion USD in a single week, indicating a distinctly bearish short-term sentiment. The giant whale is buying against the panic, diverging from the large-scale redemptions of institutional products, raising a key question: in an environment of cooling macro expectations and accelerated capital withdrawal, what kind of mid-term path for Ethereum is this type of low-buying positioning betting on?
The Rhythm and Style of a Single Whale Accumulating 70,000 ETH
● Batch Buying Rhythm: Since January 21, this whale address has been accumulating approximately 70,013 ETH through multiple batch operations with Wintermute, with a total scale of about 204 million USD, showing a continuous and gradually expanding accumulation path over time. Notably, the latest single purchase of 20,000 ETH about 12 hours ago significantly increased the total holding ratio in a short time, indicating a choice to accelerate the accumulation pace during the price correction phase rather than passively following market fluctuations.
● Cost and Risk Buffer: According to multiple on-chain and media monitoring sources, the overall average cost of this account is about 2,907 USD/ETH, while the latest large purchase price is about 2,806 USD/ETH, which means actively "averaging down" during the recent price pullback. Based on current quotes, its overall floating profit is approximately 2.1 million USD, and the buying range is distributed within the core band of 2,800-2,900 USD, reserving a buffer zone of several hundred dollars for mid-term holding, making ordinary intraday fluctuations unlikely to reach its stop-loss zone.
● Accumulation Range and Strategy: Considering the recent week’s ETH fluctuation range around 2,800-3,000 USD, it can be seen that the whale's main accumulation area highly overlaps with the market's actual transaction density. It increases the size of single purchases when prices pull back to lower levels, while following up in smaller batches at the upper range, demonstrating a typical strategy of "mid-axis cost control within the range + volume support during pullbacks"; this rhythm is closer to structured accumulation with clear mid-term expectations rather than short-term emotional bottom-fishing, but without more on-chain information, it cannot and should not extend to speculation about its identity or deeper strategies.
Smart Money Accumulating Against the Trend and the Dislocation of 1.7 Billion USD Net Outflow
● Scale of Fund Outflow: According to the latest weekly data from CoinShares, global digital asset investment products experienced a net outflow of about 1.73 billion USD last week, marking a significant capital withdrawal wave this year. Among them, the U.S. market saw an outflow of about 1.8 billion USD, almost solely dominating this overall negative change, indicating that U.S. investors are structurally reducing positions and cashing in on previous gains in an environment of slight adjustments in macro and policy expectations.
● Regional Comparison: In contrast to the U.S., Switzerland, Germany, Canada, and other European and non-U.S. North American markets recorded slight net inflows during the same period, presenting a structural differentiation pattern of "U.S. capital withdrawal, with some foreign funds stepping in." Although the capital volume in these markets is far less than that of the U.S., it still shows differences in risk appetite and interest rate expectation judgments among regional investors—U.S. investors are more sensitive and quicker to cash out, while some foreign funds are still attempting to increase allocations or maintain positions at lower prices.
● Active Buying vs. Passive Redemption: From a behavioral perspective, the whale's on-chain active buying in the secondary market and the passive redemption outflows of digital asset products are not the same type of funds. The former is mostly proactive risk-taking from the bottom up, choosing to increase spot holdings amid price fluctuations, while the latter is more about the redemption rhythm at the product level, often constrained by macro news, compliance restrictions, and capital management rules. The dislocation between the two reflects: on one hand, short-term funds choose to reduce positions through product channels; on the other hand, some market participants viewed as "smart money" are using this liquidity retreat phase to absorb selling pressure, transferring chips from passive funds to more patient accounts.
Panic and Patient Chips Under Diminished Rate Cut Expectations
● Transmission of Expectation Changes: CoinShares pointed out in its report that the recent net outflow of funds is closely related to the lowering of rate cut expectations. When investors shift from a "rapid easing" scenario to a baseline scenario of "maintaining high rates for longer," the overall valuation center of risk assets is forced to move down, and digital asset products naturally become one of the first high-beta exposures to be reduced. This expectation adjustment has not been accompanied by a cliff-like deterioration in the industry’s fundamentals, but it is sufficient to trigger collective redemptions at the product level and elevate short-term panic.
● Divergence in Institutional Mindset: Alongside the redemption data, some industry managers hold entirely different time perspectives. Yi Lihua, a partner at LD Capital, publicly stated, "Fluctuations of a few hundred dollars are within the normal range," emphasizing the importance of actively positioning during such fluctuations rather than trying to time the market precisely amid short-term price noise. This statement aligns with the whale's continued accumulation behavior in the 2,800-2,900 USD range, fundamentally viewing the current pullback as an opportunity for mid- to long-term position optimization rather than the start of a trend reversal.
● Temporal Dislocation: Breaking down the timeline, short-term macro expectation adjustments often first affect the liquidity-sensitive product-level funds, which have strict withdrawal controls and assessment rhythms, requiring rapid position reductions once expectations waver. In contrast, funds aimed at longer cycles focus more on the application expansion and network effects of assets over a 1-3 year horizon, showing higher tolerance for fluctuations within a few hundred dollars. In this round, the whale and some long-term institutions chose to gradually increase positions during the release of redemption pressure, fundamentally utilizing the temporal dislocation to convert short-term panic into a window for chip redistribution.
Viewing Liquidity and Chip Restructuring from Wintermute's Perspective
● Motivation Boundaries of Market-Making Institutions: As one of the leading market-making institutions, Wintermute plays a role in providing liquidity across multiple mainstream exchanges and on-chain markets. Its participation in large ETH transactions may simultaneously serve its own inventory management, partner needs, and overall market-making arrangements. Given that the research brief does not disclose more granular position and strategy information, existing analysis can only regard it as part of the "important liquidity provider" role, without extrapolating its specific directional bets or complete position structure.
● Absorbing Selling Pressure and Price Stability: During periods of extreme volatility, market-making institutions take on part of the market's selling pressure through order placement, hedging, and cross-platform rebalancing. When product redemptions and retail panic selling concentrate, institutions like Wintermute absorb and redistribute, breaking down concentrated sell-offs into more dispersed transactions, thereby smoothing short-term price shocks to some extent. This process often only manifests as "oscillation" on price charts, but at a micro-structural level, it means chips are gradually transferred from less stable emotional entities to more professional and risk-tolerant liquidity providers and large accounts.
● Mid-Term Attitude of Liquidity Providers: Currently, the whale and market participants like Wintermute are continuously engaging in positioning and absorption behaviors within the same price range, conveying an implicit signal: mainstream liquidity providers have not collectively retreated due to short-term capital outflows and adjustments in rate cut expectations; rather, they are actively maintaining the liquidity depth and trading order of ETH within this price band. This does not automatically equate to a unilateral bullish judgment on price, but at least indicates that under their risk models and mid-term scenario assumptions, the current valuation level still possesses rationality for absorption and allocation.
Safety Narrative and Ethereum Ecosystem's Capital Absorption Capacity
● Progress in Security and Payment Infrastructure: Beyond price fluctuations and capital outflows, Ethereum-related infrastructure continues to evolve. Security companies BlockSec and Bitget recently jointly released an AI Trading Security Research Report, enhancing the protective capabilities of trading processes from dimensions like intelligent detection and risk warning; simultaneously, PayPal's PYUSD has launched on the Stable Network, further bridging traditional payment giants with on-chain payment scenarios. While these developments do not directly change short-term prices, they quietly solidify the foundational applications of Ethereum's ecosystem in security and payments.
● Impact on Mid- to Long-Term Absorption Capacity: Enhanced security means a decrease in risk premiums for contract interactions and capital inflows and outflows, helping to attract larger and more cautious institutional and compliant funds to gradually participate; the expansion of payment channels broadens the usage radius of ETH and its related assets in real-world scenarios, enhancing network effects and transaction demand. These two main lines work together to provide stronger mid- to long-term capital absorption capacity for Ethereum-related assets: when the macro environment warms up and risk appetite recovers, the established security and payment infrastructure will become a natural vehicle for absorbing new funds.
● Logic of Infrastructure and Pullback Positioning: In the context of sustained net outflows of short-term funds and price pressures, the whale's choice to position during pullbacks largely bets on the expectation that these infrastructure dividends will gradually materialize over time. At the current stage, the pace of infrastructure construction and ecosystem expansion has not slowed due to market pullbacks; rather, it continues to advance in an environment where regulatory and compliance frameworks are becoming clearer. This makes funds confident in the mid- to long-term path more willing to exchange short-term volatility for chip positions before larger-scale capital inflows, rather than passively following emotional rotations.
Can Whale Bottom-Fishing Reverse the Capital Withdrawal Rhythm?
● Current Landscape of Long and Short Capital Game: Integrating on-chain data and product fund flows, a picture emerges of overlapping yet opposing directions—on one side, since January 21, whales and market-making institutions have been continuously accumulating in the 2,800-2,900 USD range, buying approximately 70,000 ETH against the trend; on the other side, last week saw a 1.73 billion USD net outflow from global digital asset products, with the U.S. market experiencing a 1.8 billion USD capital withdrawal in a single week. This is not simply a matter of "who is right or wrong," but rather a process of capital exchanging chips within the same price range under different risk appetites and constraints.
● Boundaries of Risk and Opportunity: In the short term, the repeated macro interest rate expectations, redemption pressures at the product level, and emotion-driven volatility may continue to bring ETH several hundred dollars of up-and-down pull, with any high leverage or overly concentrated positions still facing risks of forced liquidation or expanded floating losses. However, from a mid- to long-term perspective, the continuous improvement of infrastructure represented by security and payments, along with the active absorption of leading liquidity providers and whales within the current range, provides ETH with a relatively clear "fundamental anchor," giving it potential opportunities to attract incremental funds again when the macro environment improves, but this should not be simply interpreted as a guarantee of short-term price increases.
● Three Main Lines to Continuously Track: Whether the current whale buying against the trend can truly change the rhythm of capital withdrawal remains to be seen over time. Moving forward, the market needs to focus on three clues: first, the subsequent holdings and trading changes of the whale and associated addresses, to determine whether they are holding for the mid to long term or engaging in short-term trading; second, the capital flow of global digital asset products, especially whether the flow differences between the U.S. and other regions are narrowing; third, the evolution of macro interest rates and rate cut expectations, including how inflation and economic data reshape risk appetite. Only when these three clues resonate can the chip redistribution completed amid panic truly transform into the foundational cornerstone for the next phase of the market.
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