Arthur Hayes sold his Ethena position on Oct. 24, 20261. He told his followers the market looked dicey. Ethena's ENA token rose anyway. ENA traded near $0.208 at 10:59 UTC on Oct. 26, 2026, up 9.25 percent in a day4. Hayes runs Maelstrom, the family office built around his own trading book2. He closed its entire directional book that morning. The sale totaled $22.28 million across seven tokens.
A Trader Calls the Top
Hayes posted his own account of the trade within minutes1. “I dumped it all. The Maelstrom directional book, took profits on $ETH, $ENA, $UNI and other shitcoins,” he wrote on X. He gave his reason in the same post. "I think we gotta go down to go up," Hayes wrote. “It looks a bit dicey out there in macro and geopolitical land.” His plan, in his own words, was to sit on the sidelines until the picture cleared.
Maelstrom sold seven tokens that morning, Lawrence Mondal reported for crypto.news2. Ether led the list. Hayes sold 6,400 ETH, worth $15.2 million, 68 percent of the total. Ethena's ENA came next, 14 million tokens worth $2.76 million. Five smaller tokens filled the rest of the $22.28 million total. Hayes gave zero price targets and zero timeline for coming back in, the outlet reported. He co-founded the exchange BitMEX before he built Maelstrom.
The Chart Answers Back
Ethena's token did the opposite of what Hayes expected. ENA traded between $0.1887 and $0.2108 in the 24 hours before 10:59 UTC on Oct. 26, 20263. The token settled near $0.208 at that hour, up 9.25 percent on the day, CoinGecko showed4. Ethena had still lost 22 percent over the month before Oct. 26, even after the bounce. A seven-day window told a different story: ENA gained 9 percent over that longer stretch too. Ether, the token Hayes sold the most of, traded at $2,326.99 that same hour, CoinGecko showed5.
ENA Climbed From a 19-Cent Low to 21 Cents on Oct. 26
ENA's 24-hour trading range in US dollars, as crypto.news and CoinGecko reported
- 24-hour low
- Price at 10:59 UTC
Sources: crypto.news [3]; CoinGecko [4].
Read the chart as a table
| Item | 24-hour low | Price at 10:59 UTC |
|---|---|---|
| ENA | $0.1887 | $0.2080 |
The sequence matters as much as the numbers. Hayes posted his exit at 06:18 UTC on Oct. 241. Crypto.news confirmed the $22.28 million total that same day2. By Oct. 26, Olivia Stephanie reported for crypto.news that ENA had rebounded toward 21 cents, even as fresh Hayes-linked selling stayed in the record3. Each sale landed on a chart that kept climbing.
Hayes Sold $22 Million on Oct. 24; ENA Was Up 9% by Oct. 26
Two dated points in Arthur Hayes's Ethena trade and the token's price two days later
Read the chart as a table
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Oct. 24, 2026 | Hayes confirms a $22.28 million exit on X. He posted 'I dumped it all,' selling 6,400 ETH and 14 million ENA among seven tokens. |
| Oct. 26, 2026 | ENA trades near 21 cents, up 9.25% in a day. CoinGecko logged the price at 10:59 UTC on Oct. 26, 2026. |
Technical levels moved along with the price. ENA's 20-day moving average sat at $0.2051, just under the live price3. Support held near $0.20, then $0.18. Resistance sat at $0.23, with $0.25 possible above that. A trader who sold at the sale's $22.28 million mark would need the token to clear every one of those marks. Only then would the exit read as a mistake.
Volume told its own part of the story. ENA changed hands at roughly $420 million a day during the rebound, against a market capitalization near $2.77 billion3. That ratio means about one in seven dollars of the token's entire value traded hands in a single day. A quiet chart usually shows far less turnover than that. Thin volume on a bounce would read as noise. This one carried enough turnover to read as a real contest between buyers and sellers.
Two Reads on One Rebound
Chart readers split on what the bounce means. Alpha Crypto Signal called it a real breakout. “ENA was bouncing from a former resistance area that had become support,” the analyst wrote, pointing to a trendline the token had failed to clear for weeks3. By that read, sellers had already done their worst, and buyers simply out-numbered Hayes.
CryptoBullet read the same chart and found less comfort. "ENA did a 4x, which is clearly a sign of strength," the analyst wrote, then added a warning. “Such an aggressive 1-5 Impulse (Wave 1) needs a correction and what we've got so far is not enough,” CryptoBullet wrote, naming a buy zone between $0.122 and $0.172 for a deeper pullback.
A wider view cuts harder against the rebound story. Bitcoin fell nearly 2 percent to about $79,800 that same day, Shaurya Malwa reported for CoinDesk6. Jeff Mei, chief operating officer at the exchange BTSE, tied the drop to the coming Federal Reserve meeting. “This week, all eyes are on the Fed meeting and it already seems like investors are de-risking as Bitcoin falls below the 80k mark,” Mei said.
Mei went further on what could follow. “Given record high oil prices, the escalating US-Iran conflict, and inflation, the Fed could very well adopt an aggressive tone, which means higher rates and less liquidity for crypto and stocks,” Mei said. By his account, traders across crypto were cutting exposure ahead of the meeting.
Ethena's token still climbed through that same stretch, even as the wider market pulled back. ENA's 9.25 percent gain on Oct. 26 ran against Bitcoin's nearly 2 percent drop that same day46. The split suggests traders judged Hayes's one trade on its own chart, separate from the mood driving Bitcoin before the Fed's meeting.
Traders Point to Two Modest Clues
Crypto.news looked for one clean cause and came up empty. “The price movement has not been linked to a single confirmed development,” the outlet reported3. Two smaller facts still point somewhere. ENA's share of crypto social media chatter hit a 30-day high of 0.41 percent in the week ending Oct. 26. Ethena had also proposed in August to send 95 percent of its branded businesses' net revenue toward buying back ENA. That plan sets a standing bid under the market, one that outlasts any single trader's exit. Ethena had also pushed further into tokenized equities this year, a second product line beyond the synthetic dollar that built its name.
Both clues fall short of a filing or an audited number. A chatter spike shows attention more than conviction. Demand built into the protocol's own design works differently: a buyback plan runs whether Hayes trades or stays out. Together the two clues give a trader a reason to buy the dip beyond chart reading alone. Each still falls short of the single confirmed cause crypto.news went looking for.
A reader weighing Hayes's exit against Ethena's chart gets two honest signals pointing different ways. His own words carried genuine conviction: a trader who ran BitMEX and now runs his own fund chose to step fully aside. Ethena's buyers carried their own conviction too, measured in a climbing price instead of a post. Both signals are real. Only Ethena's buyers showed up on the Oct. 26 chart.
By the numbers
- $22.28 million is the total Maelstrom sold across seven tokens on Oct. 24, 2026, crypto.news reported2.
- 9.25 percent is how much ENA rose in 24 hours, trading near $0.208 at 10:59 UTC on Oct. 26, 2026, per CoinGecko4.
- $0.1887 to $0.2108 was ENA's full trading range in that same window, crypto.news said3.
- 4,054 likes and 920 replies sat on Hayes's post, counted as of 09:00 UTC on Oct. 26, 20261.
- Nearly 2 percent is how far Bitcoin fell that day, to about $79,800, CoinDesk reported6.
- 0.41 percent was ENA's 30-day-high share of crypto social media chatter the same week, crypto.news found3.
- $420 million a day is roughly how much ENA traded during the rebound, against a $2.77 billion market capitalization, crypto.news reported3.
- 95 percent of net revenue from Ethena's branded businesses would flow to ENA buybacks under an August proposal crypto.news cited3.
What to watch
Watch whether ENA holds its new support near 20 cents through the Fed's meeting this week. A steady print there would back Alpha Crypto Signal's breakout read. The alternative sits in CryptoBullet's own words: a fast trip back toward the 0.17 range would back a deeper correction instead. Watch Hayes's own account too. Another trade he posts himself would show whether he came back in, or stayed on the sidelines he named. Watch the buyback proposal's progress as well. A funded program would give ENA a standing source of demand that outlasts any single trader's exit.
Sources
- Arthur Hayes (@CryptoHayes), Post on X, Oct. 24, 2026, https://x.com/CryptoHayes/status/2113877751803642092
- Lawrence Mondal, "Arthur Hayes exits Maelstrom trades as $22.28m in token sales emerge," crypto.news, Oct. 24, 2026, https://crypto.news/arthur-hayes-maelstrom-eth-defi-token-sales/
- Olivia Stephanie, "Ethena price jumps 8% despite Arthur Hayes' $2.7M ENA sale," crypto.news, Oct. 26, 2026, https://crypto.news/ethena-price-prediction-arthur-hayes-ena-rebound/
- CoinGecko, "Ethena (ENA) price," CoinGecko, Oct. 26, 2026, https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/ethena
- CoinGecko, "Ethereum (ETH) price," CoinGecko, Oct. 26, 2026, https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/ethereum
- Shaurya Malwa, "Bitcoin slips under $80,000 as traders de-risk ahead of Fed meeting," CoinDesk, Oct. 26, 2026, https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/10/26/bitcoin-slips-under-usd80-000-as-traders-de-risk-ahead-of-fed-meeting