Arthur Hayes says Maelstrom has closed its entire directional trading book after on-chain trackers recorded about $22m of tokens leaving wallets linked to the BitMEX co-founder on Saturday morning.
Hayes, who runs the family office, said on X: “I dumped it all.” He said Maelstrom had taken profits on ETH, ENA, UNI and “other shitcoins”.
The transactions were followed by a series of suspicious transfers designed to imitate activity in Hayes’s wallet. Blockscout records showed 26 transfers labelled “ETH” between 05:58 and 07:32 UTC, although none involved genuine ether.
The tokens used look-alike versions of the letters in “ETH”, combining Cyrillic and Greek characters with invisible text. They were also sent in amounts matching Hayes’s real transactions, including 1,600 and 3,200.
The destination addresses were constructed to resemble genuine counterparties by sharing their first and last four characters. Hayes’s authentic 1,600 ETH transfer went to an address beginning 0x58F3 and ending Ed8B. The fake transfers used addresses beginning 0x58f3 and ending Ed8b.
The tactic is commonly known as “address poisoning”. Scammers place convincing entries in a wallet’s transaction history, hoping the owner will later copy one of the fraudulent addresses when making a payment.
Data from Scam Sniffer, cited by Bitcoin.com News, showed that one victim lost $12.2 million in January after copying a malicious address. A trader had lost $50 million in USDT through the same method several months earlier.
Hayes was not the only large crypto holder targeted during the week. A participant in the 2014 Ethereum ICO who transferred 1,000 ETH towards Kraken on Oct. 23 also received zero-value transactions from similar-looking addresses within an hour.
There was no indication that either investor had been deceived. In both cases, the genuine funds were sent to the intended destinations.
The sales took place against a difficult wider market backdrop. Ether was trading at about $2,370, down roughly 1% on the day, while ENA and UNI had each fallen by about 5%.
Bitcoin was hovering near $80,600 after recording its first daily close below the 50-day moving average since August.
Hayes has voiced growing doubts about parts of the altcoin market. In an interview on Oct. 16, he said tokens with high fully diluted valuations “can’t even pump” on Binance anymore.
He also praised Hyperliquid for returning revenue to holders.
