Rug Pull: Cryptocurrency Losses Due to Theft Hit Record High of $4.04 Billion in 2025

On January 13, on-chain analyst Ai Auntie (@ai_9684xtpa) reported that wallet address 0x6ba…78468 liquidated $6.1 million worth of ETH, incurring a $55,000 loss after holding the asset for three months. Reportedly, the address accumulated 1,946 ETH between November 17, 2025, and January 8, 2026, at an average price of $3,162.77. Two hours ago, all of the ETH was deposited into Binance (suspected to be sold) at a deposit price of $3,134.32.

On January 13, HyperInsight monitoring shows a new retail trader (address: 0xa445a) opened a 40x-leveraged short position of 125.92 BTC (≈$11.57 million) at an average entry price of $91,316.30, and is currently sitting on a floating loss of $75,000. Prior to this, the address executed its first contract trade on January 9.

On January 13, Yi Lihua—founder of Liquid Capital (formerly LD Capital)—shared the following on social media: “China, the U.S., and South Korea make up the crypto industry’s three key markets. Notably, the stock markets in all three countries are currently in a bull phase. Right now, large funds are primarily allocated to equities—even precious metals like gold, silver, and rare earths. Coupled with the effects of the interest rate hike cycle and blockchain’s underwhelming real-world adoption so far, this has resulted in four full years since Bitcoin hit its $69,000 peak in 2021. Over this period, Bitcoin has seen only modest gains, while Ethereum remains well below its four-year-old peak. For crypto investors, this has amounted to four lost years. Yet bull markets often take root in moments of despair—and now, several catalysts are aligning: the impending interest rate cut cycle, stablecoin globalization, crypto-friendly regulations, and the growing prominence of on-chain fin

January 13th, per Coinbob Popular Address Monitoring (link: https://t.me/Coinbob_track_CN), a whale address (0xfc66) has been cutting its 20x leveraged short positions on ETH, BTC, and SOL since January 8th—their combined size dropped from $45.6 million to $17.6 million. At the same time, the address recently ramped up its 5x leveraged short position on on-chain gold (PAXG): the position now totals $13 million (avg entry price $4517) and is still accumulating as of press time, making it the largest PAXG short holder. Its key current positions: - PAXG (on-chain gold) short: ~$13M size, avg $4517 entry, ~1.8% unrealized loss; - XRP short: ~$13M size, avg $2.056 entry, ~1.5% unrealized gain; - HYPE short: ~$5.87M size, avg $24.38 entry, ~9.0% unrealized gain; Beyond crypto, the address opened 18 stock short positions on Hyperliquid recently, with sizeable holdings in ORCL (Oracle), PLTR (Palantir), and AMZN (Amazon). Its total on-chain stock positions now sit at ~$4 million

On January 13, per HTX market data, XMR briefly surged past $660 to hit an all-time high. The token was last trading at $653.5, up 14.36% over the past 24 hours.