Crypto Whale Banks $3.9M Profit After Closing $521M Bitcoin Short Position, Evading Trader Hunt

A crypto whale successfully closed multiple Bitcoin short positions worth over $521 million on Tuesday, walking away with a $3.9 million profit despite organized efforts from traders to liquidate the position. The trader had opened more than 300 heavily leveraged short positions that would have been liquidated if Bitcoin’s price had risen just 2% above the entry point.

The whale’s maneuver involved a short trade at approximately $83,898 per Bitcoin with 40x leverage applied, bringing the total position value to more than $521 million. According to on-chain data, the liquidation price was set at $85,591, representing a slim 2% margin of error that made the position particularly vulnerable.

When news of this massive short position spread through crypto trading circles, pseudonymous trader Cbb0fe orchestrated a counter-effort, attempting to rally others to collectively put over $10 million into Bitcoin purchases. Their goal was straightforward: push Bitcoin’s price above the whale’s liquidation threshold and force a massive loss.

However, this coordinated buying pressure proved insufficient against Bitcoin’s typical $25 billion daily trading volume. Bitcoin experienced volatility on Monday, reaching a high of $84,573 according to CoinGecko, before dropping to $82,295. When Bitcoin hit this daily low, the whale seized the opportunity.

In less than two minutes, the trader closed over 300 short positions totaling 208.1 BTC worth approximately $16,959,000, as verified on HypurrScan. With an initial margin requirement of around $13.027 million as reported by Bubblemaps, the whale secured a 30% profit amounting to $3.932 million.

“Shorter closed,” Cbb0fe acknowledged on X. “We lost the war, but it’s been a long time since we had this much fun on the internet. [Good game] to the shorter for the win.”

The risk associated with this trade was substantial. Hyperliquid, a decentralized perpetuals exchange operating on its own layer-1 blockchain, allows leverage of up to 40x. The whale had used a cross position structure, meaning that losses could have impacted the trader’s entire portfolio.

Given the massive risk involved, some observers speculated that the trader might have insider information. However, Bubblemaps indicated to Decrypt that this was unlikely, citing the absence of significant market news before or after the position was closed.

This isn’t the first high-profile trade from this account. The same whale recently caused a $4 million loss for the community-owned Hyperliquidity Provider (HLP) through a separate $285 million leveraged bet on Ethereum. That incident prompted Hyperliquid to reduce maximum leverage limits for Bitcoin and Ethereum trades.

The whale’s account has been remarkably successful, generating profits exceeding $9.37 million within just 30 days of creation. Not resting on these gains, the trader has already established a new position: a $2.7 million long position with 5x leverage on MELANIA, the official Solana meme coin associated with U.S. first lady Melania Trump. This position faces liquidation if the Solana meme coin drops approximately 9.78% from $0.7238 to $0.653.

Unlike the Bitcoin short, there are currently no reports of traders organizing to target this new position.

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