Welcome to today’s market bulletin! We’ve gathered the most relevant trends and developments shaping the crypto and finance world, all in one place. Clear, concise, and focused, here’s what you need to know to stay on top of the markets this week. Let’s begin:
Surfing the Market, with the ETH and XRP.
Don’t miss the news about BTC dropping below $80K on heavy ETF outflows and the Hyperunit whale’s $250M ETH wipeout!
Certik is under the spotlight.
A short article about How Do Leveraged ETFs Work?
Dramatic setup for XRP which broke down under the main $1.9 support range closing the weekly below the most relevant support:
ZEC is playing with fire battling over teh $300 local support range. Really important level to defend, there is no support below at all:
Bitcoin Breaks Below $80K as ETF Redemptions Log Third-Worst Month Ever
Bitcoin slid under the $80,000 mark for the first time since April 2025 as U.S. spot BTC ETFs bled about $1.6 billion in January redemptions, their third-heaviest monthly outflow on record. The drop briefly pushed prices beneath MicroStrategy’s average purchase cost, a level many traders watch as a psychological line in the sand. Synchronized selling across major BTC and ETH products points to institutions cutting overall crypto exposure rather than simply rotating within the sector.
Highlights
ETF exodus: U.S. spot bitcoin funds shed roughly $1.6 billion over the month, with nearly $1.5 billion of that in the final week alone, marking January as the third-worst month for these products since launch.
Price under pressure: BTC’s slide took it below $80,000 and even under MicroStrategy’s estimated cost basis around $76,000 for the first time since late 2023, before stabilizing near the high-$70,000s.
Macro headwinds: The outflows accelerated after the Fed left rates unchanged and signaled few near-term cuts, while the nomination of former governor Kevin Warsh as the next Fed chair reinforced a cautious stance on risk assets.
Altcoin ETF resilience: In contrast to BTC and ETH selling, newer spot products tied to Solana and XRP attracted fresh capital through January, suggesting investors are reshuffling rather than fully abandoning crypto.
Underwater holders: Analysts estimate the average entry price for bitcoin ETF buyers sits around $90,000, leaving many investors sitting on paper losses of roughly high-single-digit percentages at current levels.
If ETF redemptions cool and macro nerves settle, BTC could use the high-$70K to low-$80K band as a base for consolidation after one of its roughest months for fund flows. Continued heavy outflows or a break of key long-term support, however, would keep pressure on prices and extend the pain for institutional holders who arrived near the cycle highs.
Hyperunit Whale Blows Up $250M ETH Bet, Leaves Just $53 on Hyperliquid
Arkham data shows the trader known as the “Hyperunit whale” has closed out their entire leveraged Ether position on the Hyperliquid exchange, crystallizing roughly $250 million in losses and leaving only $53 in the account. The wipeout comes just months after the same wallet reportedly made around $200 million shorting BTC and ETH ahead of an October tariff shock, making the reversal even more dramatic. The episode is rippling through trading circles as a textbook warning about oversized leverage and overconfidence after a big win.
Highlights
From hero to zero: After nailing a high-profile short in late 2025, the whale flipped aggressively long, building an ETH position that peaked above $700 million in notional size.
Market turn, margin pain: A sudden 10% drop in Ether toward the $2,400 area in late January triggered cascading liquidations, forcing the position to be closed at a near-total loss.
Cross-asset exposure: At the peak, the trader’s combined longs across ETH, Bitcoin and Solana reportedly topped $900 million, magnifying the impact when volatility picked up.
Identity chatter: On-chain sleuths have linked the account to a trader named Garrett Jin, though those connections have been debated and not definitively confirmed.
Leverage lesson: Analysts say the blowup underscores how even sophisticated players can implode when sizing is extreme and risk controls lag behind a suddenly shifting market.
The collapse of the Hyperunit whale’s position is likely to be dissected for weeks as a case study in leverage gone wrong. For other traders, the takeaways are familiar but timely: diversify, avoid letting one trade dominate your book, and remember that past success in fast-moving macro environments doesn’t guarantee the market will be kind the next time you size up.
Project Research: CERTIK
ORIGIN
CertiK is one of the most prominent blockchain security firms focused on protecting Web3 ecosystems from hacks, exploits, and vulnerabilities. It was founded by computer science experts with experience in formal verification and cybersecurity, bringing academic rigor and engineering discipline to blockchain audits and real-time threat monitoring.
CertiK has grown into an industry leader in smart contract auditing, onchain risk analysis, node security, and compliance tooling, trusted by thousands of projects.
OPERATIVE
At its core, CertiK’s mission is to raise the security standards of the blockchain industry by identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. It does this through a range of services and tools that help both projects and users protect assets, gain insight into risk, and build trust in decentralized ecosystems.
Security Audits & Formal Verification
CertiK conducts deep smart contract audits, analyzing code logic and behavior to find vulnerabilities that automated scanners might miss. Its rigorous formal verification methodology goes beyond basic testing — it mathematically proves certain properties of code, greatly reducing the risk of critical bugs.
Skynet & Real-Time Monitoring
CertiK’s Skynet platform functions like a security operating system for Web3. It continuously monitors thousands of smart contracts, protocols, exchanges, and wallets in real time, scanning onchain activity to detect threats, vulnerabilities, and abnormal behavior. Skynet produces independent security ratings that help developers and investors assess project risk at a glance.
Penetration Testing & Compliance Tools
Beyond smart contracts, CertiK offers penetration testing to uncover weaknesses in infrastructure, wallets, and offchain systems. Its compliance solutions like SkyInsights provide AML/CTF monitoring, risk analytics, and transaction labeling — enabling projects and VASPs to meet regulatory requirements while strengthening internal controls.
Community & Research Leadership
CertiK contributes to Web3 community knowledge through industry reports, trend analysis, and security insights. A recent collaboration with Cointelegraph Accelerator highlights its role in boosting security awareness and transparency for early-stage projects, helping promising builders scale safely.
Press enter or click to view image in full size
SUMMARY
CertiK stands at the center of blockchain security, combining deep audits, real-time monitoring, compliance tooling, and ecosystem partnerships to protect Web3. Its services help projects fix vulnerabilities before they are exploited, while its Skynet ratings system gives users and investors a public view of risk and trustworthiness. CertiK’s work extends beyond code — it includes infrastructure hardening, regulatory alignment, and continuously evolving threat detection.
A key part of its credibility is scale: CertiK assesses tens of thousands of smart contracts and protocols across multiple ecosystems, helping safeguard a significant portion of the industry’s $624 billion assessed market cap.
COMPETITORS
CertiK’s peers include other blockchain security and auditing firms such as ChainSafe, Quantstamp, OpenZeppelin, and Trail of Bits. What sets CertiK apart is its scale (real-time monitoring across 20,000+ projects with 1.8 M monthly Skynet users), formal verification expertise, and broader compliance suite that extends beyond auditing into onchain risk analytics and regulatory tooling.
How Do Leveraged ETFs Work?
In recent days, with gold and especially silver taking center stage, many investors were looking for ways to trade them without going directly into futures. That’s where ETFs come into play.
ETFs are great instruments that replicate the value of the underlying asset. But since leverage has become one of the main attractions in the market lately, many investors look for 2x or 3x leveraged ETFs to try to achieve faster gains (assuming they trade well).
However, there’s something very few people understand about these ETFs: how they actually work, and why they don’t always replicate the underlying asset in the exact proportion they advertise. These ETFs behave as if they had something similar to gamma, a characteristic typical of options.
What is delta?
First, we need to define delta, how much your position gains or loses when the underlying asset moves.
Simple example:
You have an option with delta 0.5
The stock goes up $1 → you gain $0.50
The stock goes down $1 → you lose $0.50
For leveraged ETFs, things are more straightforward:
A 2x ETF has delta ≈ 2
A 3x ETF has delta ≈ 3
If QQQ rises 1%, QLD rises 2%. If it falls 1%, it falls 2%.
At first glance, it looks pretty linear, right?
What is gamma?
That 2x or 3x leverage is only valid for a single day!
After that, the ETF must adjust its position to maintain that leverage on a day-to-day basis.
And this daily rebalancing is what creates an effect similar to gamma:
When the asset goes up, the ETF buys more When it goes down, the ETF sells more.
This amplifies trends and makes choppy markets even worse.
Example with Silver This week, silver was the star of the market, so it’s a perfect example of what we’re explaining.
Since silver experienced sharp increases, by the end of each day the leveraged ETFs (for example, the 2x ones) were overexposed, because their position had grown in value. In other words, they were no longer exactly 2x. To return to that 2x exposure, they must buy more silver futures at the close.
When ETF volumes are large, this additional buying pushes demand even higher, amplifying the price movements.
Conclusion
Understanding how the instrument you’re trading works is essential to know whether it fits your strategy or not.
Leveraged ETFs can be great for short-term trading and when there is a clear trend.
But for the medium or long term, they are not recommended, especially in a market without a clear direction (+5%, -5%, +5%).
In those environments, leveraged ETFs tend to underperform and gradually self-destruct, even if the final price of the underlying asset ends up unchanged.
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