Hyperliquid whale turns bearish, flipping $1 billion BTC position from long to short

• A Hyperliquid trader, James Wynn, closed a leveraged long BTC position worth $1.2 billion on Saturday and opened a new short position worth over $1 billion on Sunday, blockchain data shows. 
• Wynn lost over $17.5 million after closing the long position.
• Hyperliquid’s token recently surged to an all-time high as open interest on the platform balloons. 

A crypto trader on the platform Hyperliquid  has opened one of the largest on-chain short bets in history, putting nearly $50 million on the line to open a $1 billion short position on BTC with 40x leverage, just hours after closing a similarly-sized long bet on the world's most valuable cryptocurrency. 

James Wynn, also known as "moonpig" on the DEX, opened the 40x short cross-margin position — meaning his entire wallet, worth nearly $50 million, is on the line — shortly after closing a $1.2 billion BTC long position and reducing his historical profit by $17.5 million, according to CoinGlass data. 

Wynn, who had previously predicted BTC would reach $110,000 on Saturday, said he cut his losses in closing the position in a post on X. BTC rose only modestly on Saturday, from about $107,300 to about $108,000, according to The Block's Bitcoin Price page. 

So far, the bet appears to be paying off for Wynn, who has profited $3 million from the position, which he opened at an average entry price of $107,077. Wynn's current position will be liquidated if BTC rises to $110,446 and Wynn doesn't add more collateral. 

Despite the losses, Wynn's total profit stands at over $40 million on Hyperliquid, as the platform's open interest has surged to record highs, according to CoinGlass. The price of HYPE, the platform's token, has risen over 8% in the past 24 hours, according to The Block's HYPE Price page, and is now trading around $37.28, just shy of its fresh all-time high around $38.68 achieved on Saturday.