The $11 billion Bitcoin whale is back with another massive short position, signaling that some large investors are hedging for more crypto market downside amid the tariff concerns and ongoing government shutdown.
The Bitcoin whale, which is crypto slang for a large investor, returned with a $235 million 10-times leveraged short position on Bitcoin (BTC), which is a de facto bet on the price decline of the world’s first cryptocurrency.
The large investor opened the short position on Monday, when Bitcoin was trading at $111,190. He currently faces a $2.6 million unrealized loss on the short bet, which stands to be liquidated if Bitcoin’s price surpasses $112,368, according to Hypurrscan blockchain data.
The new short bet comes a week after the same whale netted about $200 million in profit from the crypto market crash, with a similar leveraged short position.
In trading, leverage refers to a strategy that allows investors to open a larger position than their holdings by “borrowing” capital. While leveraged trading can amplify potential gains, it also amplifies downside risks and can result in the loss of the entire investment.
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“The whale who made $200M shorting the Bitcoin crash to $100K has now moved $30M to Hyperliquid and is shorting AGAIN,” wrote blockchain data platform Arkham, in a Monday X post.
The whale also transferred $540 million worth of Bitcoin to new wallets, including $220 million to Coinbase exchange’s wallets over the past week.
The $11 billion Bitcoin whale emerged two months ago and rotated about $5 billion worth of BTC into Ether (ETH), briefly surpassing the second-largest corporate treasury company, Sharplink, in terms of total ETH holdings, Cointelegraph reported on Sept. 1.
Large-scale selling from previously dormant Bitcoin whales was among the main factors limiting Bitcoin’s price action in August, according to analyst and early Bitcoin adopter Willy Woo.
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New Bitcoin whales face $6.95 billion of unrealized losses after crypto market crash
Meanwhile, new Bitcoin whales are facing a cumulative unrealized loss of over $6.95 billion after the latest crypto market crash saw Bitcoin fall below the key $113,000 level.
“Bitcoin is trading below its average cost basis of ~$113K, leaving it with $6.95B in unrealized losses, the largest since Oct 2023,” wrote crypto analytics platform CryptoQuant in a Tuesday X post, adding that this cohort “holds ~45% of the total Whale Realized Cap.”
Despite the investor sentiment decline, analysts saw Bitcoin’s four-day drop to $104,000 as a healthy correction that flushed out excess leverage, prompting more conservative positioning from market participants.
Meanwhile, the short-term Bitcoin holder supply has risen, “speculative capital” is taking a larger share of the market, wrote blockchain analytics firm Glassnode in a report on Tuesday.
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