An ether the bull was caught leaning hard into the upside this week as the cryptocurrency soared, turning the whale bet into a multi-million dollar horror story.
That bull is Trend Research, a trading firm led by Liquid Capital founder Jack Yi. The firm spent the past months building a $2 billion bullish (long) bet on ether by borrowing stablecoins from DeFi giant Aave, which were reportedly backed by ether.
The position exploded this week, leaving the firm with a loss of $686 million, according to Arkham.
The blowout underscores the unchanging reality of the crypto market: Volatility can still make or break traders in a single week. It also shows how traders continue to chase risky leveraged loop plays – borrowing stablecoins against ETH security – despite these bets exploding spectacularly at every downtrend.
How it went down
The team was convinced of ether’s long-term potential and expected a quick recovery from its October dip below $4,000.
But it never came to fruition – the ether kept slipping, threatening their “looped ether” long position. As prices fell, the stablecoin collateral backing the leveraged bet shrank, while the fixed debt towered in classic leveraged fashion.
The final blow came this month when ether began to fall rapidly with bitcoin and on February 4, prices rose to $1,750, the weakest level since April 2025. Trend Research responded by liquidating over 300,000 ether, according to data source Bubble Maps.
“Trend Research started sending large amounts of ETH to Binance to repay debt on AAVE. In total, this cluster moved 332,000 ETH worth $700M to Binance over 5 days,” said Bubble Maps on X. The firm now has only 1,463 ETH.
Jack Yi described these sales as a risk control measure.
“As multi-heads in this round, we remain optimistic about the performance of the new bull market: ETH reaches above $10,000, BTC exceeds $200,000 USD. We are just making some adjustments to control risk, without any change in 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, citing volatility as the biggest draw of the crypto circle. “Historically, countless bulls have been rocked by this volatility, but often what follows is a doubled rebound,” he noted.
