A crypto whale who opened more than 300 heavily leveraged short positions on Bitcoin, amounting to $521 million, closed these trades on Tuesday, taking home a total profit of $3.9 million.
The trade, which was completed on the Hyperliquid decentralized perpetuals exchange, met resistance from traders who tried to pump Bitcoin above the whale’s $83,898 short entry.
Short trades make money when an asset’s price drops, but when using 40x leverage, a 2% move to the upside of Bitcoin at $85,591 would have liquidated the position. In response, the pseudonymous trader Cbb0fe rallied a group to put $10 million into Bitcoin, trying to move its price above the whale’s liquidation point.
However, Bitcoin was still volatile, rising to $84,573 before retreating to $82,295. Realizing it had a golden opportunity, the whale closed all its positions with two minutes — specifically, it covered 208.1 BTC worth of shorts.
The risk was high, given that Hyperliquid permits up to 40x of leverage. A cross position would have wiped out the entire portfolio of the whale.
On-chain analytics company Bubblemaps shot down speculation that the whale had inside information, noting that no relevant news preceded the trade.
That whale previously wiped $4 million from Hyperliquid’s community-owned liquidity provider as a result of a $285 million bet on Ethereum. Hyperliquid responded by cutting max leverage on Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The whale has made $9.37 million in less than 30 days, despite the risks. However, the latest move from the trader was a $2.7 million long position in MELANIA, a Solana meme coin. Liquidation looms if the price drops 9.78% — but nobody’s moved to contest the position so far.
