Arthur Hayes: Bitcoin Flash Crash May Have Been Caused by an IBIT Structured Product Issuer's Hedge

As of February 7, data from Arscan shows the Arweave (AR) network hasn’t produced a new block in over 24 hours. The latest recorded block—numbered 1,851,686—was mined on February 6 at 11:18:15 Beijing time.

On February 7th, on-chain data shows the "BTC OG Insider Whale" has just deposited 3,401 BTC (valued at ~$238.7 million) into Binance. Over the past hour, the same whale has transferred a total of 5,000 BTC (worth ~$351 million) to the exchange.

On February 7th, per LookIntoBitcoin data, the "BTC OG Insider Whale" has transferred 1,599 BTC (valued at roughly $112 million) to a new wallet in the past two hours.

On February 7, Onchain Lens monitoring shows whale trader and KOL loracle.hl (@loraclexyz) has opened 20x leveraged short positions on BTC and ETH, while establishing a 5x leveraged long position on PAXG. Additionally, their LIT short position has increased slightly, and the account’s total profit has topped $32 million. Current position details are below: - Long 1,478,842 HYPE ($48.69M value) - Short 380.76 BTC ($26.98M value) - Short 4,869.58 ETH ($10.19M value) - Long 1,576.36 PAXG ($7.79M value) - Short 947,244 LIT ($1.59M value)

On-chain data analyst yujin reported on February 7th that Aave founder Stani.eth has continued selling 1,700 ETH (worth approximately $3.53 million) over the past 13 hours. Unlike prior transactions, the founder did not convert the ETH to USDC today—instead, the 1,700 ETH was swapped for 30,727 AAVE via single-sided liquidity provision. Over the past 24 hours, Stani.eth has sold a total of 6,204 ETH (valued at roughly $11.88 million) at an average price of $1,916 per ETH.

**February 7th** Bitcoin notched its steepest weekly drop in over three years—but for some crypto die-hards (including the biggest, most well-known bulls), the worst part is they’re not exactly sure what triggered the crash. Crypto merchant bank and trading firm Galaxy Digital’s chief, Michael Novogratz, noted multiple market theories for the selloff: investors shifting to prediction markets and other high-risk bets, broad profit-taking after a red-hot bull run, and no clear single catalyst. Here are the mainstream takes on the downturn: - **New trends diverting capital**: Prediction markets, gold, silver, AI, and meme stocks have lately competed for traders’ attention, siphoning focus from crypto. Bitcoin was once the go-to asymmetric bet; now there are AI, prediction markets, and other areas to speculate in. - **ETF/derivative impact**: Wall Street is rushing to cash in on crypto’s popularity with Bitcoin ETFs, tokenized products, and derivatives. Their surge doesn’t cha