A huge crypto derivatives speculator who recently made $192 million betting on the crypto market with oddly timed short sales has opened even more bearish positions.
HyperLiquid decentralized derivatives exchange Whale Trader (0xb317) opened a $163 million leveraged perpetual contract to short Bitcoin (BTC) on Sunday.
The 10x leveraged position is currently valued at a profit of $3.5 million, but will be liquidated once BTC reaches $125,500.
The company caught the attention of the crypto community after opening a short position just 30 minutes before President Trump’s tariff announcement on Friday, netting a $192 million profit even as the crypto market plummeted.
‘Insider whale’ accused
The organization has been dubbed an “insider whale” by the cryptocurrency community due to its eerie timing, with trading starting minutes before major announcements.
Some theorize that the whale itself caused a massive leverage flash that caused the crypto market to collapse over the weekend.
“The crazy part is that he shorted an additional 9 digits worth of BTC and ETH minutes before the cascade happened,” observer “MLM” said, adding, “And this was only made public on HyperLiquid. Imagine what he would have done on CEX or anywhere else.”
“I’m sure this man played a big role in what happened today.”
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More than 250 wallets have lost their millionaire status on HyperLiquid since Friday’s crash, HyperTracker reported on Sunday.
Meanwhile, another more bullish trader opened an $11 million long position in Bitcoin with 40x leverage.
“Crypto players today are realizing what an unregulated market means: insider trading, corruption, crime and zero accountability,” commented Janice Kluge, a researcher at SWP Berlin.
Binance denies involvement in market collapse
It has also been suggested that Binance may have been involved in the meltdown, as its own order book and market makers reportedly went bankrupt, stop losses were not executed, traders were liquidated en masse, and several tokens were depegged or plummeted to zero.
However, the exchange issued an update to users, claiming that there was no crash as this was a “display issue”.
“We are aware of the speculation in the market about the cause of this event, some of which is focused on the role of the Binance platform,” the company said on Sunday.
It was confirmed that the core futures/spot matching engine and API trading “continued to operate” during the event.
Binance denied that the unpegging of USDE, BNSOL, and WBETH caused the market crash, but offered approximately $283 million in compensation to traders who held these assets as collateral and were liquidated.
BNB (BNB), the native token of the Binance exchange, has rebounded strongly, surging 14% in the past 24 hours to once again surpass $1,300.
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