an ether The bull was caught tilting sharply higher this week when the cryptocurrency crashed, turning the whale bet into a multi-billion dollar horror story.
That bull is Trend Research, a trading company headed by Liquid Capital founder Jack Yi. The company spent the last few months building a bullish (long) bet worth $2 billion on ether by borrowing stablecoins from DeFi giant Aave, which were supposedly collateralized by ether.
The position exploded this week, leaving the company with a loss of $686 million, according to Arkham.
The explosion underscores the unchanged reality of the cryptocurrency market: volatility can still make or break traders in a single week. It also shows how traders continue to pursue risky leveraged loop plays (borrowing stablecoins against ETH collateral) even though these bets blow up spectacularly in every downtrend.
How did it fall?
The team was convinced of ether’s long-term potential and expected a quick recovery from its October drop below $4,000.
But that never materialized: ether continued to slide, endangering its long “loop ether” position. As prices fell, the stablecoin collateral backing the leveraged bet was reduced, while fixed debt became increasingly important in the classic form of leverage.
The final blow came this month when ether began to fall rapidly along with bitcoin. and on February 4 prices plummeted to $1,750, the weakest level since April 2025. Trend Research responded by liquidating more than 300,000 ether, according to data source Bubble Maps.
“Trend Research started sending large amounts of ETH to Binance to pay off debt on AAVE. In total, this group moved 332,000 ETH worth $700 million to Binance in 5 days,” Bubble Maps said on X. The company now holds only 1,463 ETH.
Jack Yi described these sales as a risk control measure.
“As multiple leaders in this round, we remain optimistic about the performance of the new bull market: ETH reaches over $10,000, BTC surpasses $200,000. We are just making some adjustments to control risk, with no changes to our expectations for the future mega bull market,” Yi said in a post on X.
He added that now is the best time to buy tokens, calling volatility the most important feature in the crypto circle. “Historically, this volatility has rattled countless bulls, but often what follows is a double bounce,” he noted.
