Ethereum Briefly Drops Below $2900

December 18th: A new wallet address minted $12.1 million in USDC on Arbitrum, per MLM Monitor data. It then deposited $5.1 million into Hyperliquid, purchased 113,000 HYPE tokens (~$3 million) and 0.5 BTC (~$43,000). Currently, the wallet is executing a TWAP strategy to buy an additional ~$2 million worth of HYPE over the next 50 minutes, while still holding ~$7 million in USDC on Arbitrum.

On December 18, Coinglass data shows cumulative long liquidation intensity across major centralized exchanges (CEXs) will hit $1.052 billion if Bitcoin falls below $85,000. Conversely, cumulative short liquidation intensity on these same major CEXs will reach $371 million if Bitcoin climbs above $88,000. BlockBeats Note: Liquidation charts do not display the exact number or value of contracts set to be liquidated. Instead, the bars on these charts represent the relative importance of each liquidation cluster compared to adjacent clusters — i.e., "intensity." As such, the charts indicate how significantly an asset’s price reaching a specific level will be impacted. A taller "liquidation bar" means the price will face a more intense reaction at that point due to a liquidity cascade.

On December 18, MLM Monitor reported that a crypto whale address recently faced partial liquidation after holding a large long position worth tens of millions of dollars earlier. Liquidated assets include 431,000 HYPE tokens (≈$11.1 million) and 1,960 ETH (≈$5.6 million). The wallet still holds long positions of 1.726 million HYPE tokens (≈$44.6 million) and 7,841 ETH (≈$22.3 million). Additionally, the whale maintains long positions in XRP and ETH with a notional value of ~$230 million in a separate account.

As of December 18th, per HTX market data, Bitcoin has fallen below $87,000 and is currently trading at $86,380, marking a 1.75% decline over the past 24 hours.

Bitcoin experienced a flash crash on December 17. After briefly topping $90,000, it has since fallen below $88,000 and is currently trading at $87,333, with a 24-hour drop of 0.50%.

On December 17, all three major U.S. stock indexes closed lower across the board. The Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 0.12%, the S&P 500 fell 0.67%, and the Nasdaq Composite dropped more than 1%. (Source: FXStreet)