Follow the WeChat public account: Lazy King Squirrel
Recently, on the decentralized exchange Hyperliquid, a whale trader (wallet address starting with 0xf3) has attracted widespread attention from the community. Due to his high-leverage operations, the liquidation price of each of his trades is extremely close to the limit, but he has repeatedly made huge profits, so the community has jokingly dubbed him the "insider guy".
Just yesterday (12th), the trader's series of operations once again caught the community's attention. He went long on ETH with 50x leverage on Hyperliquid, and after conducting a "self-liquidation" operation, he still made a profit of nearly $2 million.
Whale Initiates Self-Liquidation
According to on-chain data analyst Ai Aunt's monitoring, this whale first opened a 50x leveraged long position on ETH yesterday (12th), with an initial entry price of $1,863.62 and a liquidation price of $1,677.1. The total position size was 17,130 ETH, worth about $312 million, and he also deposited $3.485 million in USDC as margin.
To learn more about crypto-related knowledge and the latest frontier information, welcome to join my group; QQ: 3786051908 or follow the WeChat public account: Lazy King Squirrel, we have the most professional community, publish daily market analysis, and recommend high-potential coins.
Over the next few hours, he continued to operate, adding margin by increasing his BTC position and converting it to ETH, expanding his ETH long position to a peak of about 140,000 ETH, with a total value of $270 million, an average entry price of around $1,900, and a liquidation price of $1,877, thereby inflating his ETH long position to occupy 24.65% of the total ETH contract position on Hyperliquid.
Just when the community thought he would not further increase his long position, the whale made one last addition, pushing his ETH long position to over 170,000 ETH, with a total value exceeding $343 million.
However, shortly after this operation was initiated, the whale suddenly carried out a surprising move, withdrawing most of his principal and profits, quickly compressing his liquidation price, and ultimately resulting in the liquidation of his remaining approximately 160,000 ETH. By choosing to self-liquidate, he also quietly walked away with a profit of about $1.85 million.
Hyperliquid Loses $4 Million
It is worth noting that after earning nearly $2 million in profits through this series of disruptive operations, the whale left a mess for the market.
After he withdrew a large amount of his principal and profits, the liquidation price of his position was quickly raised, and the remaining tens of thousands of ETH were ultimately taken over by the Hyperliquid Treasury (HLP) to complete the subsequent liquidation. However, due to the massive size of this position, the continuous decline in ETH during the liquidation process caused the Hyperliquid Treasury to bear the cost, resulting in a total loss of approximately $4 million.
In response, Hyperliquid posted on social platform X yesterday (12th) afternoon, stating that the treasury's losses were not due to protocol vulnerabilities or hacker attacks, as some uninformed users had speculated, but rather due to the withdrawal operations of this whale:
Regarding comments and questions about the 0xf3f4 user's ETH long position:
It needs to be clarified that there was no protocol vulnerability or hacker attack.
The user had unrealized PNL and withdrew, which reduced their margin, and they were subsequently liquidated. The user ultimately made a profit of about $1.8 million. Hyperliquid has lost about $4 million in the past 24 hours.
HLP's historical total profit and loss is still around $60 million. Just a reminder that HLP is not a risk-free strategy.
The maximum leverage will be updated to 40x for BTC and 25x for ETH to increase the maintenance margin requirement for larger positions. This will provide better buffer for the liquidation of larger positions.
How Does the Community View This?
Regarding yesterday's event, many community members have expressed that this whale has brought a huge negative impact to the market. On the one hand, due to the whale's previous successful extreme operations, many investors have started to follow the whale's trades, and yesterday was when the US was about to release the latest CPI data, making the follow-up investors even more convinced that this "insider guy" could lead them to victory.
Unfortunately, the whale's operations caused huge market fluctuations in a short period of time, leading to the liquidation of many follow-up traders, who ended up paying the bill for the whale.
Additionally, the Hyperliquid Treasury (HLP) also lost nearly $4 million this time, and the Hyperliquid Treasury's funds are partly sourced from those who hope to obtain fixed income, who can deposit their funds into the Hyperliquid Treasury, which will then distribute about 20% APY to these investors. This loss of Hyperliquid Treasury funds will undoubtedly also harm the interests of these liquidity providers.
Finally, Blockchain.com reminds investors that, based on this liquidation event, whether it's following a whale or investing in DeFi products, there are certain risks, and investors still need to remain cautious.