DAT panic dumps 73,000 ETH, India's crypto tax stays: Asia Categorical

Pattern Analysis’s emergency ETH dump

One of many largest Ethereum whales has entered survival mode and offered chunks of its ETH holdings to repay DeFi loans.

Pattern Analysis emerged as one of many largest institutional ETH patrons in late 2025. The corporate surfaced in November and shortly drew the eye of onchain trackers after accumulating greater than 600,000 ETH by yr’s finish.

Pattern Analysis has been linked to Yi Lihua, often known as Jack Yi, the founding father of Hong Kong-based crypto enterprise agency Liquid Capital. In response to Arkham, Pattern Analysis’s ETH holdings peaked at roughly 651,000 ETH (wrapped) on Jan. 21. However after a collection of deleveraging strikes, it held about 578,058 ETH at 11 a.m. UTC on Monday.

Yi constructed his place utilizing leverage. His accumulation technique concerned buying ETH on centralized exchanges, depositing it as collateral on Aave to borrow stablecoins, after which utilizing these funds to accumulate extra ETH.

Whereas the agency continued accumulating ETH via January regardless of weakening crypto momentum, the technique seems to have reached its limits as Ether dipped beneath $2,200 on Monday.

“Because the particular person at the moment underneath the best strain throughout the complete community, I first need to admit this: after totally exiting on the prime, turning bullish on ETH too early was certainly a mistake,” Yi stated, in response to a machine translation of his tweet.

“With BTC round $100,000 whereas ETH stayed round $3,000, we believed ETH was undervalued. The present pullback is a retracement of the earlier spherical’s earnings.”

Pattern Analysis is just not a publicly listed firm, that means its Ether holdings don’t seem in commonplace digital asset treasury rankings. In contrast, Bitmine, led by Tom Lee and listed on the New York Inventory Trade, is the most important publicly disclosed ETH holder.

Bitmine has dedicated greater than $15.6 billion to its Ether technique and, on Monday, was dealing with an unrealized lack of practically $6.6 billion.

India’s unmovable crypto tax

Indian crypto buyers had been as soon as once more denied requires the federal government to cut back a number of the harshest levies on the planet.

Within the 2026 Union Finances, the federal government’s annual monetary plan, no crypto tax reforms had been mentioned.

India imposes a flat 30% tax on crypto features and restricts the offsetting of losses. One of the vital controversial measures is the 1% tax deducted at supply (TDS), which applies to crypto transactions even when earnings haven’t been realized.

The Indian crypto business has lobbied for revisions to the tax regime for years, arguing that the principles have broken the sector and pushed merchants, companies and expertise abroad. They’ve referred to as for the tax deducted at supply to be diminished to at most 0.1%.

The finance minister didn’t fully ignore crypto in her speech. She proposed the introduction of penalty provisions for taxpayers who present inaccurate data.

Beneath the proposal, taxpayers might be fined 200 rupees per day (about $2.20) for failing to file required statements. A separate penalty of fifty,000 rupees would apply to those that submit incorrect data or fail to right errors after they’re recognized.

South Korea deploys AI in ongoing crypto manipulation crackdown

South Korea’s Monetary Supervisory Service introduced that it’s ramping up the usage of synthetic intelligence to fight crypto market manipulation. 

The regulator stated it constructed and upgraded an in-house analytics platform, Digital Belongings Intelligence System for Buying and selling Evaluation (VISTA), and developed an algorithm that mechanically detects suspected worth manipulation durations all the way down to the second.

VISTA ingests giant buying and selling knowledge and calculates indicators that flag dodgy behaviors, like sudden worth spikes or coordinated shopping for and promoting patterns per market manipulation.

The system’s newest improve provides AI-driven automation. Utilizing a method referred to as a sliding window grid search, VISTA breaks a dealer’s exercise into a whole bunch of hundreds of overlapping time segments. The platform can determine suspicious durations that human investigators may miss, permitting regulators to detect manipulation sooner.

South Korean regulators have been ramping up its crackdown on crypto market manipulators, which is handled equally to conventional markets underneath the nation’s crypto investor safety guidelines.

HKMA narrows stablecoin licensing timeline from Q1 to March

Hong Kong regulators are nearing the primary licensing choices underneath town’s new stablecoin regime, with approvals probably coming by March. 

Talking on the Legislative Council, Eddie Yue, chief govt of the Hong Kong Financial Authority, stated the regulator has obtained 36 stablecoin license purposes. The HKMA is near finishing its preliminary evaluation, although a number of candidates have been requested to submit extra data.

Yue stated the timeline for issuing licenses now depends upon how shortly candidates reply to requests for supplementary disclosures. If the knowledge is supplied promptly, the HKMA expects to make licensing choices by March. In any other case, the method may prolong past that timeframe. 

The regulator plans to take a cautious method on the outset. Yue stated the HKMA’s preliminary goal is to concern solely a small variety of stablecoin licenses.

Yue’s timeline, shared with lawmakers, aligns with Monetary Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po’s expectation, shared lately on the World Financial Discussion board in Davos.

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Yohan Yun

Yohan (Hyoseop) Yun is a Cointelegraph employees author and multimedia journalist who has been masking blockchain-related matters since 2017. His background consists of roles as an project editor and producer at Forkast, in addition to reporting positions targeted on know-how and coverage for Forbes and Bloomberg BNA. He holds a level in Journalism and owns Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana in quantities exceeding Cointelegraph’s disclosure threshold of $1,000.