「High-Frequency Shorting Pioneer」 Liquidates 8,350 ETH Short Position, Loses $45,000

Jan. 22 — Macro researcher and FFTT founder Luke Gromen says institutional investors are unlikely to push Bitcoin from its current ~$90k level to $150k this year without major market catalysts. He notes institutions typically take a wait-and-see approach rather than chasing gains without a clear event-driven trigger. Gromen identifies key variables as the U.S. “CLARITY Act” progress and whether the Federal Reserve will cut rates further. In extreme scenarios—such as a full-scale trade war or economic recession—Bitcoin could drop to $60k, triggering forced selling by holding companies. By contrast, CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju says institutional demand remains strong: institutions have accumulated ~577k BTC (roughly $53B) over the past year. Grayscale previously noted institutional participation and regulatory clarity are key drivers for Bitcoin to hit new highs.

On January 22, Layer-1 blockchain protocol Saga paused its Ethereum-compatible SagaEVM chainlet hours after suffering an attack that resulted in roughly $7 million in losses. The incident involved unauthorized funds being transferred cross-chain and swapped for ETH, causing the project’s stablecoin, the Saga Dollar, to depeg—dropping to a low of $0.75. The Saga team noted the chain was paused at block height 6,593,800. Initial investigations indicate the attack involved a series of contract deployments, cross-chain operations, and liquidity withdrawals—but no consensus failures, validator compromises, or key leaks. The mainnet’s overall structure remains secure, per the team. Beyond the Saga Dollar, its stablecoins Colt and Mustang were also impacted. The team has locked the attacker’s fund addresses and is collaborating with exchanges and cross-chain bridges to blacklist them. The chain will stay paused until a full security audit and post-mortem analysis are completed and discl

Jan 22 — Per HyperInsight monitoring (via Telegram: @HyperInsight), a whale with the wallet address prefix 0x9311 opened a new 20x-leveraged long position on BTC at 13:41 today. The position totals 125 BTC, equivalent to ~$11.24 million. As of now, it holds an unrealized loss of ~$9,978. Its average entry price is $89,900, with a liquidation price around $83,000.

As of January 22, Coinglass data shows that total net outflows of ETH from centralized exchanges (CEXs) reached 30,600 in the past 24 hours. The top three CEXs by ETH outflows are: - Coinbase Pro: 81,000 ETH outflow - Bybit: 18,900 ETH outflow - Bitstamp: 194.54 ETH outflow Additionally, Binance recorded an inflow of 25,600 ETH, leading the inflow rankings.

On January 22, Binance announced it will list Sentient (SENT) under the Seed Label.