Wintermute Founder: Blaming the 1011 Flash Crash on a Single Exchange Is Not Rational

January 31st — Early this morning, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) addressed recent market FUD, stating the "1011 Flash Crash" was not caused by any Binance system issue or operational error. Binance is currently properly regulated and has no motive for misconduct. No website or trading platform can guarantee 100% uptime, and user terms clearly note such scenarios may occur with no platform liability. While Binance did face minor system performance issues during peak hours, it has handled compensation for related losses well. Later, OKX founder Star took to social media to address the recent implications, explicitly calling on Binance to take responsibility for the first time. Star claimed the "1011 Flash Crash" stemmed from Binance’s irresponsible USDe activities: the exchange encouraged users to convert USDT and USDC to USDe for attractive returns but failed to adequately highlight underlying risks, ultimately leading to a minor market shock that triggered a broader collapse.

As of January 31st, per monitoring from HyperInsight (Telegram: @HyperInsight), the "Long-Term BTC Bear" whale (address 0x5d2f4) has been steadily reducing its Bitcoin short position over the past 10 hours. Currently, the whale holds a 20x leveraged short position of 389.91 BTC, with an unrealized gain of $10.72 million. The whale entered the trade when Bitcoin was priced at $111,499.3, opening a 20x leveraged short of 499.91 BTC. To date, it has collected $9.9967 million in funding fee settlements.

On January 31, **HyperInsight** monitoring shows **Hyperliquid** has stayed active in precious metals over the past 24 hours—with gold and silver contract volumes both ranking in the platform’s top 10. - Combined 24-hour trading volume for the gold token PAXG contract and GOLD contract reached $602.7 million, with total open interest (OI) of $196 million. - The silver-mapped SILVER contract posted a 24-hour volume of $2.66 billion and OI of $224 million. - The copper-mapped COPPER contract recorded a 24-hour volume of $161.3 million and OI of $115.8 million. *Note: Open interest (OI) replaces "total contract position" for industry-standard clarity; $2.659B is rounded to $2.66B for readability, aligning with U.S. financial media conventions.*

On January 31, MegaETH announced via social media that the project has not — and will not — gift MEGA tokens to any centralized or decentralized exchange as a listing "fee or airdrop."

On January 31, He Yi posted a photo with Star, founder of OKX, on social media and shared the following: “I believe a company succeeds not by attacking others, but by addressing its own weaknesses. In December, I discussed poaching talent with Star at an F1 circuit—he told me to poach freely. Star never asked about 1011, but lately he’s been enthusiastically sharing his views on Binance everywhere, which has brought more attention to us. That might just be his way of showing enthusiasm.”

Onchain Lens monitoring shows the address linked to 0xSun deposited 2 million USDC into HyperLiquid at 9:00 a.m. Beijing time today and opened a 4x-leveraged long position on SILVER via trade.xyz.