Arthur Hayes buys $72K ETHFI 5 hours before Upbit listing: Market takes note
This purchase has the crypto community accusing Hayes of insider trading.
EthereumFi [ETHFi] is grabbing eyeballs after a major exchange listing and a well-timed trade.
Just hours before South Korea’s Upbit announced an ETHFi listing, Arthur Hayes was seen buying the token. For context, this listing is quite significant, given South Korea’s strong retail participation and preference for altcoins.
Hayes and the insider trading allegations
Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX and CIO of Maelstrom, accumulated ETHFI shortly before a key listing on South Korea’s largest crypto exchange, Upbit.
Per data from Lookonchain, Hayes received 132,730 ETHFI (approximately $72,800) from Anchorage Digital roughly five hours before the exchange confirmed the token’s addition to its KRW market.
The timing, of course, has added fuel to the insider trading narrative.
Earlier this year, he deployed over $3.4 million across multiple DeFi tokens, including ETHFI. Data also revealed that about a month prior, Hayes moved 2.15 million ETHFI at around $0.47, which could be earlier distribution activity.
The latest acquisition occurred near $0.55 per token.
It is notable that as part of standard listing controls, Upbit temporarily restricted orders. This included a brief buy freeze and limits on low-priced sell orders, while enforcing limit-only trading during the initial phase.
A look at the big picture
Recent data revealed that KRW-denominated altcoin activity has stayed elevated well beyond the last cycle, even after excluding top alts like Ethereum [ETH], Ripple’s XRP [XRP], Binance Coin [BNB], and Solana [SOL].
More importantly, there’s a persistent buy-side base from 2023 through 2026, with stronger absorption on Korean exchanges.
This essentially means that large Korean participants have been consistently taking the other side of retail selling for more than three years. The result of this is a deeper support structure in KRW alt pairs than in earlier cycles, alongside higher aggregate trading volume.
This is important for ETHFI because a listing in Korea puts the token in one of the market’s most active altcoin venues.
Final Summary
- Arthur Hayes is under fire for insider trading as Upbit lists ETHFI hours after he accumulated.
- Korean altcoin buy pressure since 2023 could mean stronger support for new listings like ETHFI.
