THE $10B HYPERUNIT WHALE IS UP OVER $12M SHORTING $700M $BTC
The ancient BTC whale holding over $5B of BTC and $5B ETH has increased his BTC short on Hyperliquid to $735M. He is now up over $12M.
What did he know?
Address: 0xb317D2BC2D3d2Df5Fa441B5bAE0AB9d8b07283ae
When ppl claim this I always wonder how they think it happens, or have unrealistic expectations on how much $1bn actually is.
I joined crypto with $200. If I held my initial bitcoin since then and never traded, I would have ~$300k.
If, instead, from that moment I sold the top and bought the bottom of every crypto cycle on Bitcoin, and never paid any taxes, I would have ~$6m USD.
If I put my entire net worth into the Ethereum ICO and never touched it, today I would have ~$150m pre-tax.
While it was definitely possible to have made >$1bn with the opportunities in the market, these versions of reality would also require me to make no mistakes, and have no need to spend $ in real life, or take excessive risk via leverage.
In reality, I grew up in a working class family. I didn’t have a trust fund and I had to pay off my student loan myself. I had a job at Tescos while at high school. After university, I needed to pay rent and fund cost of living and eventually buy a place to live.
I worked at startups for relatively little $ salary, and while a couple have done okay, they still are illiquid and worth nothing until some exit.
Perhaps if I erase a couple of dumb mistakes and drawdowns, or if I had a lil more grind, then my answer would be different today. But it is easy to say this with perfect hindsight vision. It’s easy to see where you could have optimised better, and decisions you made look dumb when the past makes things so obvious.
The truth is I have always optimised for enjoying my life and not going to 0. I never felt like I had a safety net, so it was never possible for me to do anything in any other way. I would probably have less money if I had tried to add more risk or chased $ harder, because being all-in with your entire livelihood is a mental battle and I feel I only win that battle when the stakes are lower.
In writing this, maybe I do understand why CT folks believe this, because modern CT sees crypto as a late-stage lottery ticket farm, where the optimal strategy is to 5x leverage up your portfolio in a hope of catching a good 20% move and then leaving. Or, literally going all-in on the next coin they heard Ansem is buying. So perhaps to them, looking back at the charts, of course that’s what successful folks did.
In reality, I use leverage close to never (and typically to reduce risk rather than add risk — have used it to add risk maybe 3 times in the last 5 years, and maybe 15 times ever). I never go all-in on anything, have only ever done that on BTC and ETH before in the last decade. When I buy other things, I limit risk to tiny amounts, because I treat it as a 0 until proven otherwise (so, always <1% liquid portfolio). Liquid portfolio is also a smaller % of overall portfolio to future-proof against my own fuckups.
Obviously I made a lot of money, I have been here 12 years! CT doesn’t want to hear about “getting rich in a decade” though. I am happy with where I am and have never really cared or optimised for maximising $ earnings, but instead having a nice life that lets me enjoy the game we play together.
A common question I’ve heard in Seoul is: what makes Hyperliquid special? I haven't found a way to distill it all into a sentence, but one reason that stood out to me the past few days is the culture of dreaming big and executing, while staying true to the original ethos of defi: integrity, fairness, and transparency. The work is hard, and there are many crucial components to be built. But that’s the beauty of the Hyperliquid community. Builders rise to the challenge and push the frontier of what is possible. I’ve never been more excited to continue building alongside everyone.
Since beginning work on Hyperliquid a few years ago, this was my first time traveling to meet so many community members, and also my first time in Korea. Thank you to @hlh_build organizers @hyperpc_ and @B__Harvest for an incredible hackathon, to @christyhwchoi for the thoughtful fireside chat at KBW, and to @SKYGG_Official/@hypurrcorea, @hypurr_co, and @Hyperliquid_KR for tonight’s community event.
Most of all, thank you to the builders, traders, and community members who give Hyperliquid its soul. I’m blown away by the hospitality, energy, and talent growing every day. There’s a long journey ahead to house all of finance, but it’s good to appreciate how far we’ve come together.
Last week, Hyperliquid was the first major venue to offer PUMP prelaunch trading. It became the main platform for price discovery leading up to PUMP’s highly anticipated TGE, with over $400M in open interest and $600M in 24h volume as a prelaunch perp.
Following TGE, Hyperliquid was also the first major venue to offer spot trading of PUMP through @unitxyz. It remains one of the most liquid venues to trade PUMP spot.
Hyperliquid continues to support the movement of capital formation and price discovery onchain. This trend is reflected in four consecutive days of open interest all-time highs. Today’s OI reached $12.1B.