A whale that borrowed 5000 ETH for a short sale 1 month ago closed their position on the ETH price reaching $3000.

January 2nd — Per monitoring data from HyperInsight (Telegram: @HyperInsight), key whale position shifts between 10:00 AM and 8:00 PM ET today are as follows: ### Long Positions - A whale/institution that posted a $13.73 million ETH loss in November (from a week of buying high/selling low) spent $9.95 million today to buy 2,251 XAUt (Gold Token) at an average price of $4,420. - “Whale Brother” Huang Licheng took profits by cutting his 25x leveraged ETH long position to 8,000 coins, while adding a 10x leveraged long position of 11,888.88 HYPE tokens. ### Short Positions - A whale who borrowed 5,000 ETH to short a month ago closed their position after ETH hit $3,000, netting ~$390,000 in short profits. - Whale address 0x218 expanded its ETH short position to 18,875.18 coins (valued at $57.32 million). - “Meme Short Army Leader” LIT boosted its short position to 3,813,196 coins — now the largest on-chain LIT short position.

**January 2nd** Data from Coinglass shows the altcoin market is warming up: Some altcoin trading pairs on major CEX/DEX platforms have returned to neutral funding rates following price gains for select altcoins today. However, as Bitcoin (BTC) nears the $90,000 resistance level again, the market is shifting bearish—contrasting with the prior downturn, where BTC and ETH held neutral rates while altcoins broadly had negative rates. Specific funding rates for mainstream coins are listed in the attached image. **BlockBeats Note** Funding rates are set by crypto exchanges to align perpetual contract prices with underlying asset prices. They facilitate fund transfers between long and short traders (the platform does not charge this fee) and adjust the cost/profit of holding contracts to keep contract prices close to underlying asset values. **Rate Interpretation** - 0.01% = baseline rate - >0.01% = bullish market - <0.005% = bearish market

**Binance to Delist Spot Trading Pairs on Jan. 3** According to official sources on Jan. 2, Binance will delist and cease trading for the following spot trading pairs at 16:00 Beijing Time on Jan. 3: AI/BNB, ETC/BNB, FLOW/BTC, LPT/BNB, SFP/BTC, VET/BNB, WCT/FDUSD, WIF/BRL, and WLFI/BRL.

Blur data shows the Milady NFT collection’s floor price surged 27.53% in the past 24 hours to 1.07 ETH as of January 2nd—likely tied to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s recent avatar change. BlockBeats previously reported Vitalik updated his Twitter avatar to a Milady NFT-style image at 8 a.m. Beijing time (0:00 UTC) on January 1st.

On January 2, Mike McGlone—Senior Commodity Strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence—warned that gold, silver, metals, and stocks face the risk of an “excessive rally” in 2026. A key driver behind Bitcoin and crude oil’s 2025 declines was their prior sharp price surges, he noted. Gold, silver, copper, most metals, and the U.S. stock market are now showing a similar overheating trend for 2026. While the rapid price rally has fundamental support, it often spurs increased supply, curbs demand, and ultimately triggers price corrections.

On January 2nd, K33 Research data shows Bitcoin’s 2025 volatility—measured by the standard deviation of daily returns—hit just 2.24%, marking the lowest level in the asset’s history. This signals growing maturity in the Bitcoin market, driven by rising institutional participation, ETF approvals, and stabilizing price volatility.