Arthur Hayes on Japan's Interest Rate Hike: Yen to Drop to 200 Against Dollar, Bitcoin to Rise to One Million Dollars

On December 19, Elon Musk replied with a "fire" emoji to the price movement of Russell—a meme coin on the Base ecosystem—on X today. The token saw a brief 3x price surge before retracing. Per GMGN data, Russell currently has a market cap of $9.4 million and a 24-hour trading volume of $5.5 million. BlockBeats reminds users that meme coin trading is highly volatile, often driven by market sentiment and hype around concepts, with no actual value or use case. Investors should be aware of the risks involved. [Link: https://t.me/gmgnaibot?start=i_m4TE56o8]

December 19 — HyperInsight monitoring shows that over the past hour, a whale with an address starting with 0xa8 has continued to add leverage to its 40x leveraged BTC short position. As of press time, it has increased its position by roughly $78.61 million, bringing the current position size to approximately $94.08 million. The average entry price is $87,200, the liquidation price is $89,400, and unrealized profit stands at $360,000 (11%). Additionally, the address has set a limit stop-loss order in the $88,000–$88,300 range and a limit take-profit order in the $79,000–$83,000 range. Since opening the BTC short position on December 8, the address has closed and rolled over the position multiple times, realizing nearly $3 million in profits from this trade. Currently, its position size has exceeded that of the "BTC OG Insider Whale"’s BTC long position, making it the largest BTC short position on Hyperliquid.

On December 19, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes announced on X that his family office Maelstrom is heavily accumulating high-quality shitcoins.

On December 18, Base announced the full launch of its Base app. That day saw over 12,000 new users register—an all-time high. As of now, the app’s total user base stands at 175,650.

On December 19, Garrett Jin—agent for the "BTC OG Whale Inside Source"—noted that the ETH/Nasdaq 100 Index ratio has historically bottomed near 0.11 multiple times, coinciding with the RSI (Relative Strength Index) approaching the 30 "oversold" threshold. This signals ETH is currently in a bottom range. Looking ahead, Ethereum’s odds of outperforming the Nasdaq 100 in the coming months have risen, with a target ratio of 0.16–0.22, implying roughly 50%–100% upside potential. Ethereum and the Nasdaq 100 have a high correlation, so significant deviations are unlikely to persist. Mean reversion is inevitable—especially amid U.S. policy developments: potential quantitative easing (QE) restart, direct household cash stimulus, and SEC Chairman Atkins accelerating the shift of U.S. stock trading to Ethereum and other platforms. Additionally, the weekly chart shows the BTC/Nasdaq 100 Index’s RSI is deeply oversold (now below 30), signaling Bitcoin is poised to enter a strong bull market.

On December 19, Solana-based early DeFi protocol Lifinity announced it will gradually wind down operations, per data from SolanaFloor. Previously, the team secured near-unanimous approval from its community governance via a "Protocol Termination" proposal. Going forward, it will convert approximately $42 million in treasury assets plus $1.4 million in development funds into USDC and distribute the total proportionally to LFNTY token holders. The community anticipates each token will be allocated $0.90 to $1.10. The redemption system is set to go live in roughly 9 days. Any remaining funds unclaimed within one year will be re-airdropped proportionally to users who have already claimed their shares.