Loan Shark Engages in ETH Long Squeeze, Unloading 20,599 ETH to Repay Loan

On December 18, Derive founder Nick Forster told *The Block* that traders have shifted sharply toward defensive structural positioning. Bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility has climbed to nearly 45%, while skew remains around -5%—and longer-term skew is anchored at that level through Q1 and Q2 of next year. Ahead of the upcoming expiry, market positions show clear polarization: call option open interest is still building at $100,000 and $120,000 strike prices, indicating some traders are still betting on a potential sharp Bitcoin rebound. However, overall fund flows signal heightened caution. Forster noted shorts are building a "significant amount of put option exposure" near the $85,000 strike to hedge against a short-term Bitcoin drop below this key level. He added that option-implied probabilities still reflect a challenging market: the market assigns Bitcoin only ~30% odds of hitting $100,000 and ~10% odds of reclaiming its all-time high.

On December 18, market sources report that Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT.O) will merge with TAE Technologies in an all-stock transaction. (Golden Finance)

On December 18, Binance Alpha announced via official sources that it will become the first platform to list TradeTide (TTD) on December 20. Eligible users can visit the Alpha activity page and claim the airdrop using Binance Alpha Points once Alpha trading goes live. Further details will be released separately.

On December 18th, per data from Hyperinsight’s monitoring, a "whale" expanded their ETH long position by 575 coins in roughly 30 minutes, pushing total holdings to 5,575 coins. As of press time, the latest batch of their long positions is valued at $15.92 million, with an unrealized loss of $38,460 and a liquidation price of $2,753.

On December 18, on-chain analyst Ai Auntie (@ai_9684xtpa) reported that the "1011 Flash Crash Shorting Whale"—who engaged in insider trading after the flash crash—has boosted their long SOL position by 51,612.85 SOL. Their total SOL holdings now sit at 301,612.8 SOL, valued at $37.36 million. The whale’s average entry price is $135.2, with an unrealized loss of $3.42 million to date. Following this latest purchase, the whale’s **overall position** (across all assets) has officially topped $700 million.

December 18th — Per HyperInsight monitoring, UNI surged 10% in the short term likely driven by Binance’s addition of the token to its dual-coin investment product, last trading at $5.28. A Hyperliquid whale address beginning with 0x413c holds unrealized gains exceeding 50%. Its current position, worth ~$1.18 million, has an average entry price of $4.99. The address opened a 10x leveraged UNI long position at midnight yesterday and has been adding to it as recently as 4 hours ago. Additionally, the largest UNI short position held by the “Shanzhai Short Army Vanguard” was cut by over 30% at 1 PM yesterday. The position now stands at ~$3.38 million, with unrealized gains of $1.39 million (410%).