wintermute

Wintermute posted that, on the macro front, risk assets continued to rise last week. Even with the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield breaking above 5%, a high not seen since 2007, there was no significant risk-averse sentiment in the market. Crypto assets led the way, with altcoins rising approximately 5%, followed closely by BTC, and the Nasdaq also recorded gains, while long-term U.S. Treasuries performed the weakest.The report believes that oil prices will be a key factor influencing the interest rate hike expectations for October. Currently, oil transportation through the Strait of Hormuz remains significantly below pre-conflict levels, with Brent crude prices nearing $103 per barrel. If oil prices continue to stay around or above $100 per barrel, market expectations for another rate hike in October may remain high, at which point the core issue will shift to whether risk assets can absorb further rate hikes in the short term while bonds remain under pressure.In the crypto market, BTC last week first stood above the 50-week moving average on a weekly basis, with the current level of $82,500 being the upper boundary of the previous consolidation range, which is also a key position to watch this week; if this level can stabilize, it may become the foundation for the previous breakout; otherwise, a drop below this level will reignite concerns about the validity of the breakout. Meanwhile, BTC's market share has increased, the breadth of altcoin gains is at a relatively high level, and institutional options trading continues to increase with low Delta bullish options and call spreads being added for year-end positioning.

According to Onchain Lens monitoring, the market maker Wintermute currently holds a short position of 126.25 million USD on the decentralized trading platform Hyperliquid.The main positions include: ETH short of 46.92 million USD, SOL short of 11.3 million USD, HYPE short of 10.03 million USD.

According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin's monitoring, the FTX / Alameda Research asset liquidation team transferred 27,372 ETH to Wintermute through 6 wallets 3 hours ago, worth 75.32 million USD, suspected to be entrusted to Wintermute for sale. The related address is 0xCe84...f228.

According to Onchain Lens monitoring, after HYPE broke through 97.5 USD, Wintermute has begun to transfer HYPE tokens in large quantities to major centralized exchanges.

Wintermute released the market weekly report, stating that the Federal Reserve passed an interest rate hike of 25 basis points to 3.75-4% with a unanimous vote of 12-0 on September 21. Sixteen officials expect at least one more rate hike this year, and inflation is not expected to return to the 2% target before 2029.The two major catalysts that the market was focused on—the FOMC rate hike and the CLARITY Act—have both materialized: the CLARITY Act failed to pass in the Senate (49-50, not reaching the 60-vote threshold), and the SEC and CFTC immediately stated they would formulate cryptocurrency regulatory rules under existing authority. The market adjusted for only one trading day before recovering. BTC traded this week in the range of $75,000 to $81,000, with a weekly closing price of $81,159, marking the first time since last November that it has stood above the 50-week moving average; ETH rose 6.7%, trading in the range of $2,350 to $2,600.In terms of ETF funds, there was a net outflow of $746 million from Tuesday to Wednesday, followed by a return of $593 million from Thursday to Friday, resulting in a net outflow of about $6 million over five trading days, with the outflow triggered by CLARITY almost fully replenished within 48 hours. Entering this week, both BTC and ETH broke through the upper range before the U.S. stock market opened, accompanied by about $250 million in short liquidations, with BTC briefly reaching $86,000, a new eight-month high.

According to Onchain Lens monitoring, Wintermute (0xecb...2b00) currently holds a short position in perpetual contracts worth 160 million USD, with an unrealized loss of 3.57 million USD.Among them, the short position in ETH is worth 53.05 million USD, the short position in BTC is worth 26.66 million USD, the short position in SOL is worth 17.84 million USD, and the short position in HYPE is worth 11.62 million USD; the trading volume in the last 30 days is 16.91 billion USD.

According to Onchain Lens monitoring, Wintermute transferred approximately 2,550 bitcoins to Binance, worth about 192.91 million USD.

According to OnchainLens monitoring, after the "CLARITY Act" failed to advance this morning, the market maker Wintermute began to realize short profits. The short exposure decreased from 102.1 million dollars to 55.54 million dollars, and the unrealized profit and loss increased from 928,000 dollars to 2.28 million dollars.Its ETH short position also decreased from 15,330 coins (approximately 38.47 million dollars) to 7,810 coins (approximately 18.72 million dollars), with a cumulative profit of 179.89 million dollars.

According to Wintermute OTC trader @Jjay_dm, the BTC ETF experienced a net outflow of $463 million, marking the first negative value since the low in June, with ARK and Grayscale accounting for a combined outflow of $371 million, while BlackRock remained flat. As a result, BTC fell 4.4% over the week, closing at $76,838, making it the worst-performing asset, while Ethereum dropped 1.5%, and altcoins overall rose by 1%.On a macro level, the U.S. August CPI recorded a month-on-month increase of 0.4% (core 0.3%), higher than the expected 0.2%, and the PPI annual rate reached 5.4%, prompting Goldman Sachs to change its September forecast from "hold steady" to "raise interest rates." The market's expectation for a 25bp rate hike on Wednesday has risen to 87%. Meanwhile, the situation in the Middle East continues to escalate, with Brent crude oil surpassing $105 per barrel, and the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield hitting a 20-year high.Wintermute stated that after the ETF fund outflow turned negative, it tends to hold a neutral rather than bullish stance on the market. This week has two key events: ① On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate will conduct a procedural vote on the CLARITY Act (the cryptocurrency market structure bill), which requires 60 votes to pass; ② On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve will announce its interest rate decision, with the rate hike itself already priced in, but subsequent hawkish statements (especially signals regarding continued rate hikes in the first quarter of 2027) may pose downward pressure on the cryptocurrency market.

According to Onchain Lens monitoring, Wintermute currently holds approximately 102.1 million USD in perpetual contract short positions and continues to deposit more funds to increase its short exposure.Data shows that its total exposure is 122.23 million USD, with unrealized profits of about 928,400 USD, a loss of 12.04 million USD in the past 30 days, and a historical cumulative profit of approximately 176.88 million USD from perpetual contracts. Among them, the largest position is a short position of 15,330 ETH, valued at about 38.47 million USD.

According to Lookonchain monitoring, Wintermute (0xf819...73AA) deposited 61,847 ETH to Binance and Coinbase in the past 3 hours, worth 160.3 million USD.

According to monitoring by Lookonchain, Wintermute obtained 2.5 million tokens from the $LAPTOP project team and immediately began selling them on-chain. Currently, 466,255 tokens have been sold at an average price of $4.47, cashing out approximately 2.08 million USD, with about 2.03 million tokens remaining to be disposed of.

According to on-chain analyst @ai_9684xtpa, 21 hours ago, Wintermute received 2.5 million LAPTOP from the LAPTOP multi-signature address, and subsequently distributed the relevant tokens to multiple exchange deposit addresses.Previously, GSR Markets and G20 received market-making tokens a few days ago, and Wintermute may be a newly added market-making participant. If this transfer is indeed part of a market-making arrangement, the total amount of LAPTOP actually used for market-making will increase to 23 million tokens, accounting for 2.3% of the total supply. Among them, GSR Markets received 15.5 million, G20 received 5 million, and Wintermute received 2.5 million.

According to Lookonchain monitoring, a certain Ethereum OG whale sold 11,000 ETH through Wintermute one hour ago, worth 27.23 million USD.

Wintermute released a market update indicating that the non-farm payroll data for August exceeded expectations, pushing the interest rate hike probability to nearly 60%. Bitcoin briefly retreated from $82,400 but still closed the week up 3.45%, standing above $80,000. Bitcoin ETFs recorded a net inflow of $987 million, marking three consecutive weeks of positive inflows, totaling nearly $3.8 billion. This indicates that the crypto market has withstood the test of hawkish data.Bitcoin has fallen about 50% from its peak, which is significantly less than the over 75% declines seen in the same periods of 2018 and 2022, reflecting earlier involvement from ETFs and institutional funds. Wintermute believes that capital is flowing from stocks and gold into crypto assets, forming the premise for a new cycle. $82,000 is a key level that needs to be broken, while $72,000 is the point to judge a trend change. The voting on the CLARITY Act, along with the CPI and FOMC meetings, are all scheduled for next week. The end of the Robinhood Chain Gas subsidy at the end of September will be the first test of the sustainability of activity. If Bitcoin falls below $72,000 and ETF outflows turn significantly negative, a reassessment will be necessary.

According to The Defiant, the on-chain data analysis platform Arkham has attributed a holding of 3.43 million PONS (approximately 2.4 million USD) to the market maker Wintermute, making it a significant new holder of PONS. Arkham stated that Wintermute appears to be gradually buying PONS through a time-weighted strategy and speculated that it may be preparing to market make for the token on-chain.PONS is the native token of Pons, a meme coin launch platform on the Robinhood Chain, which is responsible for routing completed fundraising tokens to the Uniswap pool. Arkham's data shows that this holding accounts for approximately 0.48% of the circulating supply of PONS (712.1 million tokens) and 0.34% of the total supply (1 billion tokens). Additionally, 6.46 million and 5.58 million PONS are held in the Uniswap V3 pool and the Uniswap PoolManager contract, respectively.Previously, Uniswap Labs had also purchased PONS tokens, and the Pons project team stated that this move aims to achieve "long-term alignment."

According to Arkham monitoring, the market maker Wintermute is continuously buying PONS tokens through a TWAP strategy, with the current holdings valued at over 3 million dollars.Arkham indicates that Wintermute may soon provide market-making services for PONS on-chain.

According to Onchain Lens monitoring, Wintermute (0xecb...2b00) holds a short position of 99.82 million dollars and a long position of 5.12 million dollars on Hyperliquid; Galaxy Digital (0xcac...26b3) holds a short position of 26.41 million dollars and a long position of 6.21 million dollars.The two combined hold a total of 126.23 million dollars in short positions and 11.33 million dollars in long positions. In the past 30 days, Wintermute has lost 15.3 million dollars, and Galaxy Digital has lost 5.96 million dollars.