Whale address degen-retard.sol withdrew 99,153 SOL from Binance at about $192 two years ago, worth $19M at the time, and staked the tokens, Lookonchain data show. The holder has now sold the remaining 98,328 SOL for $12.34M using a DCA selling strategy. After staking SOL for almost two years, the whale recorded a loss of more than $6.6M.

Address 0xC45 withdrew 8,000 ETH worth approximately $23.72 million from Binance and deposited the funds into Aave V3 on Jan. 21, OnchainLens data show. The whale now holds 21,220 ETH across two wallets, valued at around $62.87 million.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed a native Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) at the protocol staking layer on January 21, aiming to strengthen network security and validator decentralization, according to a post on the Ethereum Research forum. Under the design, validators could register multiple independent keys and operate as a "group validator," with block proposals or attestations considered valid only after signatures from a preset threshold of keys; holders of multiples of the 32 ETH minimum stake could configure up to 16 keys and select a threshold, with the scheme embedded in-protocol rather than relying on an external coordination layer. Buterin said the added performance overhead would be minimal, introducing one extra delay for block production while leaving attestation latency unchanged, and the approach is compatible with any signature scheme, which he argues helps reduce dependence on long-term cryptographic assumptions. If adopted, Buterin believes native DVT could make self-custodied, fault-tolerant staking more accessible for individuals and institutions and lessen reliance on large staking providers, potentially improving decentralization metrics such as the Nakamoto coefficient; he noted the proposal remains at an early-discussion stage and will require broad community evaluation and consensus.

7 Siblings became Spark's largest depositor after placing 596,800 ETH (worth about $1.765 billion) via eight addresses, EmberCN reported on Jan. 21. They borrowed 193 million stablecoins including DAI, USDT and USDS, then bought 49,287 ETH during the October–November decline at an average $3,531. The position shows $27.7 million in unrealized losses, and EmberCN said Spark's No. 2–7, 10 and 11 largest addresses also belong to 7 Siblings.

Centralized exchanges recorded a cumulative net outflow of 38,600 ETH in the past 24 hours on Jan. 21, Coinglass data show. Binance led with 33,900 ETH in outflows, followed by Coinbase Pro at 9,714.83 ETH and OKX at 7,469.71 ETH. Kraken recorded an inflow of 10,600 ETH.

A whale address opened a 3x short position on 937 ETH at an average price of $2,988.45 on Jan. 21, showing an unrealized profit of $11,200, HyperInsight data show as reported by BlockBeats. The address used high-frequency small trades to reduce slippage and accumulate the position.

Ethereum could trigger $527M in long liquidations on major centralized exchanges if its price falls below $2,900 on January 21, Coinglass data show. If the price breaks above $3,100, short liquidations could reach $1.239B across these platforms. BlockBeats reports that the liquidation heatmap reflects relative intensity of liquidation clusters rather than exact contract counts or notional values, with higher bars indicating potential for stronger market reactions when price reaches those levels.

A cryptocurrency wallet identified as 0x9671 sold 798,734 UNI at a price of $5.33 per token five days ago and repurchased 757,684 UNI at $4.83 per token approximately five hours ago, according to on-chain data provider Lookonchain.

On Jan. 21, crypto trader 0M Swing Hunter (address 0x880a) expanded short positions across Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL), and HYPE, lifting unrealized profits to $15.25 million, according to Hyperinsight. Known for high-leverage, short-term trading, the trader has generated $110.9 million in cumulative profits, with the latest moves reinforcing a bearish conviction on these assets.