Cryptocurrency market further plummeted today under the impact of concerns about economic recession and tariff policies, with Ethereum falling to a low of $1,754 this morning, a new low since October 2023, and down more than 50% from its December 2022 high of $4,107. In this dire situation, many early Ethereum whales have started to flee.
Ethereum whales fleeing
According to on-chain analyst @ai_9684xtpa, the whale redbase.eth, who had built a position of 6,100 ETH at an average price of $2,200 on the 9th, has sold all his ETH at $1,962 yesterday. However, this morning he has opened another round of ETH trading, spending $7.41 million to buy 3,986 ETH at a cost of $1,860:
This is going long on ETH.
According to Spot On Chain monitoring, a whale who participated in the Ethereum ICO has transferred 7,000 ETH (about $12.94 million) to the Kraken exchange during the price plunge this morning, after being dormant for 5 months. This whale wallet still holds 30,070 ETH (about $54.4 million).
MakerDAO faces $300 million in liquidations
Additionally, it is worth noting that according to data from defillama, there are two key ETH on-chain liquidation prices on MakerDAO, $1,792 (about $110 million) and $1,830 (about $120 million). Although these prices have already fallen below on CEX, due to MakerDAO's use of the Oracle Security Module (OSM), the actual system price is still delayed in updating even if the market price falls below these liquidation points.
According to reports, the MakerDAO system collects data from multiple authorized price feeds, calculates the median as the reference price through the Medianizer contract, and applies it with a delay of about 1 hour to prevent short-term volatility from being exploited. If MakerDAO's liquidations are triggered, it may lead to a chain reaction of liquidations in DeFi protocols and exchanges.
Some whales have started to hedge. According to monitoring by @EmberCN, a whale facing liquidation risk due to leveraged long ETH had to sell 25,800 ETH (about $47.81 million USDT) to reduce the liquidation line. The whale's ETH was originally bought in July 2024 at an average price of $3,084 with leverage, and the loss on the leveraged part alone has reached $31.75 million.
This whale currently holds 35,034 ETH ($64.68 million) on Aave, with a health rate of 1.4 and a liquidation price of about $1,316.
According to monitoring by Lookonchain, another whale on MakerDAO is also facing liquidation, involving 60,810 ETH ($109 million), with an ETH liquidation price of $1,798.64. Although the market price once fell to $1,791, due to the Maker's Ethereum oracle price not yet being updated, this whale still has a chance to add more collateral to avoid liquidation.
