Arthur Hayes Bought ETHFI Just Hours Before Major Upbit Listing

The asset’s price exploded by almost 20% in minutes after the listing news went live.

The former CEO of the derivatives giant BitMEX has made several multi-million-dollar trades over the past six months or so, but his latest purchase raised some eyebrows in the cryptocurrency community.

This is because it preceded a major listing of the token he bought, which pushed its price up by double digits.

Did He Know?

Lookonchain data from earlier today shows that Hayes received over 132,000 ETHFI tokens from Anchorage Digital at $0.55 per one. Shortly after, news emerged on social media that one of the largest South Korean exchanges, Upbit, had listed the asset for trading against the local won.

Similar listings by the Asian giant have led to immediate price pumps for the underlying asset on almost all occasions. One of the latest examples involved ICP, whose price skyrocketed by over 16% last week.

Although ETHFI is a much smaller altcoin, its pump was essentially similar, going up by 18% from $0.54 before the announcement to $0.64 minutes after it. However, it was halted there and has lost almost all gains, perhaps driven by the overall market-wide correction today.

Even though some comments below the original post indeed questioned whether Hayes indeed had some insider knowledge, the amount of ETHFI he received seems rather negligible compared to what he sold a month ago – $72.8K now vs. $2.15 million back then.

Interesting — just 5 hours after Arthur Hayes(@CryptoHayes) bought $ETHFI, #Upbit announced its listing.https://t.co/QEgAyVQ4lz pic.twitter.com/9jorCuAHuX

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) March 19, 2026

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Previous Sell-Offs

CryptoPotato reported in February, shortly after the market tumbled, that Hayes had disposed of a large number of DeFi-linked tokens, including ETHFI. Aside from a $950,000 ETHFI selling spree, he also dumped $1 million worth of ENA and $1.1 million worth of PENDLE.

Hayes even sold ETH last August, suggesting at the time that the asset’s price is likely to tumble. However, the largest altcoins went on a run instead, jumping by double digits in weeks. As such, Hayes explained that he had to rebuy at higher prices and asked for forgiveness from the Ethereum community.