In the Eastern Eight Time Zone this week, the cryptocurrency market has once again witnessed a counter-trend move by heavyweight institutional funds amid a backdrop of sustained pressure on ETH prices and frequent liquidations of high-leverage long and short positions—Tom Lee's institution BitMine purchased a total of 34,954 ETH from Kraken and BitGo, with a transaction amount of approximately 105.5 million USD. This massive spot buy sharply contrasts with the high-leverage long and short bets on the market, often exceeding 20 times; on one side, there are medium to long-term funds accumulating during the downturn with real money, while on the other side, there are derivatives traders experiencing wild fluctuations with price movements. This article will focus on BitMine's "big bet" and the simultaneous liquidation of leveraged positions, dissecting the market structure where institutional accumulation coexists with the volatility of leveraged traders, and attempting to restore the true capital structure and behavioral layering of the current ETH market.
BitMine's Counter-Trend Buying: A 105.5 Million USD Spot Signal
● Source of Funds and Transaction Structure: Multiple on-chain data and media reports indicate that BitMine purchased a total of 34,954 ETH through the institutional platforms Kraken and BitGo, amounting to approximately 105.5 million USD based on the market price at the time of the transaction. Kraken, as a well-established trading platform, and BitGo, as a mainstream custody and routing provider, represent a typical institutional accumulation path with this "exchange + custody" combination, showing that the funding party prefers to concentrate on acquiring large amounts of spot assets in a more auditable and compliant manner.
● Relative Significance of Scale and Timing: Considering the current market environment, the purchase of 34,954 ETH far exceeds the typical reallocation size of a single large holder. In the context of Ethereum's daily on-chain and market transaction volume increasing while prices remain under pressure, a one-time injection of over 105 million USD in spot buy orders indicates that BitMine did not wait for "trend confirmation" but chose to actively increase positions during a period of cold market sentiment and heightened volatility. This timing choice aligns more closely with a "buying on weakness" strategy for medium to long-term allocation rather than a tactical trading approach chasing price increases.
● Market Interpretation of Counter-Trend Accumulation: In light of the market commentary that "BitMine continues to increase its ETH holdings despite unfavorable market conditions," we can observe the contrast between sentiment and behavior: while ETH is under pressure and bearish sentiment is high, BitMine continues to buy in spot form. For other institutions and professional traders, this action is seen as a renewed vote of confidence in ETH's medium to long-term value, reinforcing the narrative of "prices weakening but bottom positions being gradually locked in," adding more layers of competition to subsequent price movements.
Comparison of Institutions and Retail Investors: Who is Betting on ETH with Real Money
● Funding Attributes of Institutional Spot Layout: As Tom Lee's cryptocurrency investment institution, BitMine's method of increasing its holdings by purchasing 34,954 ETH at once essentially reflects typical institutional funding characteristics: primarily spot-focused, emphasizing asset allocation rather than short-term speculation. In the absence of publicly available details on total holdings, it can still be inferred that its behavior is closer to a strategy of "extending holding periods and optimizing holding costs," rather than relying on high leverage and high-frequency trading to capture short-term price differences, which significantly enhances its capacity to withstand medium to long-term volatility compared to retail investors.
● Leverage Preferences of Retail and Small Investors: In stark contrast to BitMine's spot accumulation, a large number of small and medium-sized funds primarily engage in contracts and leveraged products on ETH, characterized by using relatively small principal amounts to leverage nominal exposures by several times or even dozens of times, chasing price volatility profits in a short time. In this model, funds are more focused on the direction of the "next candlestick" rather than the returns from allocations over a year or even several years. Once the market reverses, the need for additional margin and passive liquidations can quickly amplify short-term volatility, distancing from the logic of "value holding."
● Triple Differences in Cost, Duration, and Risk Tolerance: From the perspective of funding costs, institutions hold spot assets through their own funds or low-cost financing, primarily bearing the risk of price fluctuations; retail investors using high leverage simultaneously bear the risks of price fluctuations, funding rates, and liquidation. Regarding holding duration, institutions can accept fluctuations over several months or even years to obtain returns, while retail investors often compress their cycles to hours or days. In terms of risk tolerance, institutions like BitMine can absorb temporary floating losses and continue executing strategies, while high-leverage retail investors face forced liquidation once they hit the liquidation line, exiting the market much faster than institutions, resulting in completely different betting methods on ETH between the two types of funds.
Machi's High-Leverage Longs and Liquidated Shorts: Amplifiers of Volatility
● Fragile Structure of High-Leverage Longs: According to reports from BlockBeats and others, Machi currently holds 3,333.88 ETH in 25x leverage long positions, with a liquidation price of approximately 2,940.71 USD. At such high leverage, even a few percentage points of decline in the spot price could significantly approach the liquidation zone. Once triggered, the passive sell-off of over 3,000 ETH in nominal size will quickly flood the market, compounded by other leveraged positions that are simultaneously triggered, causing a chain reaction.
● Extreme Case of Short Liquidation Chains: On the other hand, a case reported by Odaily shows that a rolling trader previously established a short position of approximately 332 million USD in nominal size on ETH. After the market sharply reversed, about one-third of this position was liquidated, giving back 20 million USD in floating profits, but still retaining about 266 million USD in short positions to continue the game. This case intuitively demonstrates how large leveraged positions can be "squeezed in reverse" by the market during periods of extreme volatility, while also exposing the substantial leveraged exposure still present in the market.
● How Leverage Amplifies Price Volatility Chains: Whether it is Machi's 25x long position or the one-third liquidated 332 million USD short position, it essentially indicates that high-leverage positions are amplifiers of short-term volatility in ETH. When prices approach the concentrated liquidation zones of longs or shorts, system liquidations can rapidly amplify selling or buying pressure within a very short time, pushing prices further away from equilibrium, which in turn triggers more position liquidations, forming a closed loop of "price volatility—leverage liquidation—further volatility," manifesting on the chart as waterfalls or sharp rises, rather than being entirely driven by fundamentals.
Futures and Spot Misalignment: Spot Institutions Bottom Fishing to Hedge Leverage Noise
● Three-Layer Breakdown of Market Structure: Looking at the current ETH market from the perspectives of futures, leverage, and spot, futures and high-leverage contracts primarily carry short-term speculation and hedging demands, with concentrated positions and rigid liquidation mechanisms; spot is more used by institutions and medium to long-term funds for asset allocation and strategy combinations. Within the same time window, the sharp up and down spikes on the chart are more derived from "trading volatility" in the futures and leverage layers, while behaviors like BitMine's large-scale layout in the spot market reflect longer-term allocation considerations, with a natural misalignment in rhythm and objectives between the two.
● Marginal Support Role of Institutional Buying: When ETH prices are in a downward or oscillating range, over 105 million USD in spot buy orders can often provide a certain degree of marginal support locally. On one hand, institutional buying directly absorbs some of the passive selling pressure flowing out from the leverage and futures markets, slowing down "cascade" declines; on the other hand, this also sends signals to other participants on the chart and emotional levels—despite short-term price pressure, there are still medium to long-term funds choosing to lock in positions at the current range. However, in the absence of comprehensive transaction details, this support is more of a qualitative judgment and difficult to quantify simply as a specific "bottom range."
● Noise Amplification and Trend Concealment Due to Time Misalignment: It is worth noting that liquidations in leverage typically occur within very short time windows, while institutional spot accumulation often takes place gradually and in batches. This time misalignment makes it easier for the market narrative to be dominated by high-impact "noise" from liquidation events, overshadowing the quietly accumulating institutional spot positions behind the scenes. The result is that in the short term, the severe volatility and spikes caused by liquidations obscure the true direction of the trend; in the medium to long term, spot accumulation is the variable that can better shape the supply-demand structure, but it will not be fully reflected in any single candlestick.
Cross-Asset Signals: Institutional Capital Layout Beyond ETH
● Strive's Bitcoin Financing Plan: Beyond ETH, the overall allocation trend of institutional capital towards cryptocurrency assets is also noteworthy. According to reports from BlockBeats and others, Strive plans to raise 150 million USD through the issuance of preferred shares for Bitcoin-related investments. This model of providing funding sources for cryptocurrency assets through traditional equity financing structures indicates that some institutions are no longer satisfied with passive holding but are attempting to increase their exposure in the BTC space through structured products and specialized vehicles, injecting more "long money" into the institutionalization of the entire asset class.
● Integration of Custody and DeFi to Lower Barriers: On the other hand, the Canadian custody institution Balance has integrated the Aave protocol, allowing institutions to access mainstream DeFi lending tools within a compliant custody framework. This combination of "traditional custody + DeFi protocols" effectively lowers the barriers for institutions to participate in on-chain yield strategies, enabling more non-native cryptocurrency institutions to directly connect with on-chain financial scenarios for assets like ETH without building their own infrastructure, creating new bridges between spot holdings and derivative yields.
● Divergence of Large Shorts and Mainline Bets: Despite the increased spot and equity funding from institutions like BitMine and Strive, as well as the integration at the infrastructure level like Balance, the case of the trader still holding 266 million USD in short positions reported by Odaily shows that there are still participants in the market maintaining large directional short bets on BTC and ETH. This indicates that while institutions are generally increasing their overall allocation to cryptocurrency assets, there is a high degree of divergence in views among professional trading funds regarding specific varieties and cycles: on one end, there are long-term bets on ecological development through spot and equity, while on the other end, large derivative positions are used to speculate on short-term declines, forming a three-dimensional divergence across assets and strategies.
In the Storm: Who Can Survive the Reshuffling of Leverage Liquidations
The coexistence of institutional funds counter-trend bottom fishing and frequent liquidations of high-leverage positions is one of the most prominent contradictions in the current ETH market. On one side, BitMine continues to increase its ETH spot holdings with a scale of 105.5 million USD, attempting to accumulate at low levels during price pressure, while on the other side, cases like Machi's 25x long position and the one-third liquidation of the 332 million USD short position continue to escalate short-term volatility. Medium to long-term funds and short-term sentiment are pulling on the same chain, forming the most authentic backdrop of the current market. It is important to emphasize that due to the limitations of publicly available information, this article does not make any inferences about BitMine's historical total holdings, staking ratios, or market share in ETH, nor does it provide a clear price target; it only interprets its current accumulation behavior based on disclosed data and does not extend assumptions about future position changes or profit outcomes. For ordinary participants, institutional spot buying is indeed expected to potentially form a bottoming chip in the medium to long term, providing some buffer for ETH's supply-demand structure, but in the context of still substantial high-leverage exposure and the possibility of triggering liquidation chains at any time, short-term volatility may still be exceptionally severe. How to control positions and leverage in such an environment will determine who can endure the next round of concentrated liquidation reshuffling and see the true direction after institutions gradually accumulate chips.
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