Hyperliquid whale who made $150 million with short bet opens new $160 million short

A Hyperliquid trader who caught the attention of the crypto industry with a well-timed short bet on Friday has opened a new position, putting over $16 million into a 10x leveraged short bet on the price of Bitcoin, a trade with over $160 million notional value. 

The whale is currently up over $4 million in unrealized profit as of publishing time, according to HypurrScan data, with a liquidation price of $123,500 — below Bitcoin’s recent all-time high of $126,080. The trader entered the trade at a BTC price of $117,370; the world’s largest cryptocurrency is currently trading around $114,430, according to The Block’s Bitcoin Price page. 

The trader first caught attention after onchain analysts noticed that a single Hyperliquid account profited more than $150 million by shorting the prices of bitcoin and ether shortly before President Trump’s announced new 100% tariffs on Chinese imports Friday night, which sent crypto markets reeling and led to record liquidations on centralized and decentralized exchanges, like Hyperliquid. 

Most traders on Friday were long bitcoin and ether, with long bets making up the majority of the recorded liquidations. Yet the Hyperliquid trader opened two massive short bets, using $80 million for the BTC short and $30 million for the ETH short, according to analysis by pseudonymous blockchain sleuth Specter. The HypurrScan pages for the two shorting wallets show a 7-day combined profit of nearly $158 million at current prices. 

The trader added to their position until just before President Trump’s announcement, fueling suspicion of advance knowledge. 

“The HyperLiquid whale shorting BTC/ETH yesterday was placing shorts up till exactly 1 minute before Trump threatened tariffs against China. The last short was placed at 20:49 GMT. Trump tweeted at 20:50 GMT. What incredible ‘luck,'” internet sleuth and YouTuber Stephen Findeisen, who is better known as Coffeezilla posted to X on Saturday.

Further onchain analysis by blockchain analyst Eye drew a tenuous link between the whale’s activity and Garrett Jin, co-founder of defunct exchange BitForex, which went offline in February 2024 after $57 million was apparently transferred out of the exchange’s hot wallets. A wallet, which had deposited into the same Binance deposit address as a wallet used by the whale, had sent 40,000 USDT to “ereignis.eth” two weeks before the short was opened, Eye found. The “ereignis.eth” wallet has another ENS name: “garrettjin.eth.”

Eye’s analysis did not convince all other onchain analysts. “The only direct connection is a 40K USDT transfer and everything else in this post is unconfirmed theories,” onchain analyst ZachXBT wrote on X. “It seems more likely to be a friend of Jin.”

Jin also has a position open on Polymarket, according to an October 10 X post from analyst Emmett Gallic, which predates the massive shorts. “Garrett Jin has had one position open on Polymarket and has been buying for the last few weeks: Yes shares on ‘Will Trump Pardon Changpeng Zhao in 2025?,'” Gallic wrote. “Now Trump is thinking about pardoning him.”

Jin’s suspected Polymarket account has nearly $40,000 on the line in the market; with recent social media speculation that President Trump is considering pardoning the former Binance leader, the bet is currently up 39%, with unrealized profits of $11,136. The Block could not immediately reach Garrett Jin for comment.  

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