Arthur Hayes, founder and former CEO of the crypto exchange BitMEX, has unstaked and offloaded more than 237,000 GMX, the native tokens of perpetual crypto futures decentralized exchange GMX, which has been in his possession since March 2022.
According to a tweet by market analysis platform Lookonchain, Hayes transferred the tokens to a new address linked to crypto algorithmic trading firm Wintermute, sparking rumors of a possible sale and the realization of $3.2 million in profits.
Arthur Hayes(@CryptoHayes) unstaked all 237,672.8 $GMX($9.7M) and transferred it to #WintermuteTrading, possibly selling $GMX by #WintermuteTrading.
His average cost of buying $GMX is ~$29.74, and he will make ~$3.2M after selling.https://t.co/kMs7HWy115 pic.twitter.com/d6pyFSdx7J
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) April 8, 2024
Hayes Sells GMX Holdings
Hayes began accumulating GMX in March 2022 and remained the number one personal address holding the tokens until today. Between March and December 2022, he bought 218,337 GMX worth $6.5 million from centralized exchanges and decentralized platform Uniswap at the token’s then-average price of $29.74.
After staking the tokens for two years and accumulating rewards, Hayes’ stash grew to 237,672 GMX. The cryptocurrency’s value has also risen and was changing hands at $41 as of the early hours of Monday.
However, Hayes’ sale of the $9.7 million worth of GMX tokens in one transaction dragged its value down almost 10% to $37. Although the asset had recovered slightly at the time of writing and was trading at $39, it is still down 3% in the past 24 hours, per data from CoinMarketCap.
It is worth noting that the Wintermute-linked address has transferred roughly 41,000 GMX worth $1.68 million to centralized crypto exchanges Binance, OKX, and Bybit. Binance received 25,000, while Bybit and OKX received 8,000 tokens each.
Hayes’ Thoughts on USDe
Hayes’ GMX sale comes less than a month after the American entrepreneur expressed optimism about Ethena Labs’ Ethereum-based synthetic dollar stablecoin, USDe.
The launch of USDe in February raised concerns about a repetition of the TerraUSD (UST) incident, which wiped $40 billion off the crypto market with its collapse. While both stablecoins share some similarities, the former offers an annual percentage yield of 27.6%, higher than the 20% provided by UST before its demise.
The BitMEX’s founder sought to address the fears of the crypto community by explaining that both stablecoins used different yield generation models and USDe was unlikely to meet the same fate as UST.