Aniket Pujari
A whale on Hyperliquid has gone viral for starting a short position for around $450 million worth of Bitcoin. There is now an active ‘man-hunt’ to stop the perpetrator in its tracks.
According to data on Hypurrscan, on Mar. 17 at 6:30 AM UTC, the whale just closed two positions through Time-Weighted Average Price or TWAP for a combined 208 BTC (BTC) at a price of $83,392. The total worth of both transactions is equal to more than $18 million.
At 4:30 AM UTC, the anonymous trader added $7.5 million in collateral to their Bitcoin short position to avoid being liquidated by the margin on Hyperliquid. On-chain data shows that the trader has accumulated a loss of nearly $1.1 million from unrealized profit and loss or PNL.
At the moment, the trader’s current position stands at 5,167 BTC, with a value of around $429 million. The short position stands at 40x leverage and has an unrealized profit of $4 million. Simultaneously the trader also has a long position with 5x leverage for 571,715 MELANIA (MELANIA) valued at $390,000.
The whale first started its enormous short position in Bitcoin on Mar. 16. At the time, a crypto trader on X with the username @Cbb0fe or CBB detected the whale’s suspicious activity and called for other traders to join a public manhunt to liquidate the whale’s position before it could cause more harm to the ecosystem.
“If you are willing to hunt this dude with size, drop a DM, setting up a team right now and already got good size,” said CBB on their post.
In a separate post, CBB told traders to message them with “7 figs size only” as the combined funds of the team had already exceeded eight figures.
An hour after the team was formed, they managed to drive up the market price of Bitcoin from $83,183 to more than $84,690. As a result, the whale was forced to deposit $5 million in USDC (USDC) to increase its margin and avoid liquidation.
However, the manhunt has yet to success as the whale continues to evade liquidation by boosting its position to short BTC through TWAP.
Hyperliquid’s official account also recently commented on the viral bear trader’s activity on-chain, describing how the protocol has become synonymous with “the market” as it has garnered significant attention from the crypto community.
“When a whale shorts $450M+ BTC and wants a public audience, it’s only possible on Hyperliquid,” wrote the account.
Earlier this month, on March 12, a whale began a long position on Hyperliquid with 50x leverage for 175,000 ETH (ETH) worth $340 million. Due to the large liquidation amount, Hyperliquid was forced to absorb the position at $1,915 in an effort to liquidate it. As a result, Hyperliquid lost more than $4 million.
