Arthur Hayes liquidated the directional book of Maelstrom, his family office, on Saturday, with on-chain trackers tallying the sales at $22.28 million across seven tokens. The BitMEX co-founder's move, which came nine days after he publicly went long Ethereum, booked profits on Ethereum (ETH), Ethena (ENA), Uniswap (UNI) and several other altcoins. Hayes co-founded the crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX in 2014, and because he broadcasts his market calls publicly, wallets tied to him and Maelstrom are routinely tracked by on-chain analysts.

"I dumped it all. The Maelstrom directional book, took profits on $ETH, $ENA, $UNI and other shitcoins," Hayes said in a post on X. "I think we gotta go down to go up," he added. He described macro and geopolitical conditions as "a bit dicey" and said he is waiting for a green light before buying back into the market.

Seven tokens left labeled wallets in a 40-minute window

On-chain trackers identified 6,400 ETH ($15.2 million), 14 million ENA ($2.76 million) and 323,000 UNI (~$2.24 million) among the proceeds, with smaller quantities of ETHFI, AERO, PENDLE and ZAMA making up the rest of the seven tokens. Such tallies depend on address labeling, the practice of matching wallet activity to known entities — exchanges, trading desks and public figures like Hayes.

Etherscan records point to a larger ETH figure. A second address associated with Hayes moved 8,000 ETH in four transactions, sending 3,200 ETH to a Galaxy Digital deposit and 1,600 ETH each to Binance, FalconX and a fourth address. The main wallet shifted 14 million ENA to a Binance deposit, while 323,000 UNI and 3 million ZAMA went to an address tagged for market maker Wintermute. Minutes later, a Wintermute wallet returned 2,425,850 USDC. Binance is an exchange, Galaxy Digital a digital-asset financial services firm, FalconX an institutional prime brokerage and Wintermute a market maker — the standard venues where large holders source liquidity for sizeable orders.

The same wallet transferred 1.89 million ETHFI to a FalconX deposit and 120,000 PENDLE to the fourth address. On Base, Coinbase's Ethereum layer-2 network, it channeled 546,610 AERO to Binance.

The tokens left the labeled wallets between 1:34 a.m. and 2:14 a.m. ET on Saturday. Hayes published his announcement at 2:18 a.m. ET, four minutes after the last transfer. Even after the transfers, the labeled wallet retained roughly 14.45 million ENA, leaving the residual stake visible to anyone monitoring the address.

From bailout bet to the sidelines

The liquidation reverses a public call made days earlier. "Instead just trade the eventual multi-trillion dollar bail out. Long $BTC $ETH," Hayes wrote Oct. 15. The address behind Saturday's ETH transfers had received 8,012 ETH from his main wallet on Oct. 14. The pivot came on explicitly macro grounds — a pattern seen repeatedly in his recent trading history.

"Going to sit on the sidelines and wait for the all clear signal," Hayes wrote. Given how visible this weekend's exit was on-chain, any re-entry is likely to be just as observable.

The exit also marks a reversal from his May essay, "The Butterfly Touch," in which he pegged a Bitcoin (BTC) bottom near $60,000, floated a $126,000 target and said he would take Maelstrom's portfolio "to maximum risk unless drastically changes."

Hayes has abandoned positions on macro grounds before, announcing full exits from HYPE and NEAR in June. He was subsequently accused by on-chain sleuth ZachXBT of selling HYPE, NEAR, ZEC and WLD within two weeks of boosting each token. Days after Hayes hyped the CARDS token, on-chain observers flagged Maelstrom sending roughly $1.92 million of it to market maker Flowdesk, Cryptopolitan reported. Hayes replied to ZachXBT at the time, saying he "sold to a willing seller at a price." That history is part of why the weekend drew fast attention: the on-chain paper trail predated his announcement by minutes.