Crypto Whale Bets Against Bitcoin and XRP With $140 Million in Shorts

In brief

• A crypto whale opened short positions against Bitcoin and XRP with 20x leverage, totaling $140 million.
• At the time of writing, the wallet is up about $3.1 million despite both assets only moving down just a couple of percentage points.
• It comes as the crypto market starts to turn bearish, with institutional crypto firm Galaxy lowering its end-of-year Bitcoin target on Wednesday.

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A whale on Hyperliquid opened two heavily leveraged short positions against Bitcoin and XRP, totaling $140 million. The unknown wallet is now up about $3.1 million in about nine hours.

The fresh Hyperliquid wallet was funded with $7 million in USDC from an Arbitrum wallet that redeemed the tokens from a zero address, making it impossible to track the funds any further.

This has led some observers to speculate that the wallet holder is trading with insider knowledge. It follows the alleged “Trump insider whale” that recently profited close to $200 million by shorting before the record $19 billion liquidation cascade on October 10. A trader linked to that wallet denied having insider knowledge, despite opening the shorts just before President Trump’s China tariff threat tanked the markets.

The latest Hyperliquid whale opened a short with 20x leverage against Bitcoin at an average entry price of $102,978, and a 20x leveraged short against XRP at an average entry price of $2.30. Together, the positions totaled $140 million.

At the time of writing, according to block explorer HypurrScan, the wallet is up $2.3 million with the Bitcoin short, as the leading cryptocurrency has dropped less than 2% to $101,110. It is also up $808,000 on XRP as the token dropped almost 4% to $2.21.

These bets come amid a broader market downturn that has the crypto industry fearing a bear market has already begun. The crypto fear and greed index hit a six-month low of 21 on Tuesday, representing “Extreme Fear,” when Bitcoin dropped below $100,000 for the first time in six months.

Institutional crypto firm Galaxy, for example, lowered its end-of-year target for Bitcoin on Wednesday from $185,000 to $120,000. The firm cited concerns that BTC is entering a “maturity era” of low volatility, thanks to its convergence with traditional finance.

Predictors on Myriad, a prediction market developed by Decrypt 's parent company Dastan, believe that Bitcoin is about 56% more likely to touch $115,000 next than $85,000—as a sign that not everyone is bearish.

That said, the Hyperliquid whale’s short position may not be a bet that Bitcoin will plunge as low as $85,000. Due to the massively leveraged position, it means that even tiny price movements result in potentially huge profits—or losses.