One minute before Trump torpedoed crypto markets, someone was already positioned to profit from the carnage. A mysterious whale had built a $1.1 billion short position on Hyperliquid, perfectly timed to capitalize on what became crypto’s bloodiest day—$19.1 billion in leveraged positions wiped out in 24 hours. The whale walked away with over $150 million while everyone else got liquidated.
This wasn’t just lucky timing. This was surgical precision in a market where milliseconds separate fortune from ruin.
The Timeline That Raises Questions
Every transaction tells a story, and this one reads like insider knowledge.
Starting October 9 at 16:39 UTC, the whale deposited $80 million and began shorting Bitcoin and Ethereum perpetuals on Hyperliquid—a DEX that operates on its own blockchain, making every trade visible, unlike the black boxes at Binance or Coinbase. By the time Trump posted his 100% tariff threat on Truth Social at 20:50 UTC, the whale controlled 3,600 BTC (~$735M) and 91,000 ETH (~$380M) in short positions.
The expansion of positions just one minute before the announcement? Pure coincidence, apparently. But in crypto, coincidences this perfect tend to have explanations that authorities find very interesting.
The Garrett Jin Connection
Blockchain detective work linked the whale to a disgraced exchange CEO with interesting political bets.
On October 11, investigator Eye (@eyeonchains) connected a whale wallet to Garrett Jin, former CEO of the collapsed BitForex exchange, through a $40,000 USDT transfer in September. Arkham Intelligence labeled it a “Trump insider whale,” sparking speculation that ricocheted across crypto Twitter like a Succession plot twist.
Jin denied direct involvement, claiming he merely “managed nodes and insights for a client” who was hedging spot positions against macro risks. His explanation: “The short position is just a partial hedge… strong expertise in managing risk.” Yet his large Polymarket bet on Trump pardoning Binance’s CZ and his quick scrubbing of XHash mentions after the allegations only deepened the intrigue.
When Transparency Creates New Mysteries
DeFi’s open-book approach exposed trades that traditional exchanges would have hidden forever.
Hyperliquid’s blockchain transparency—designed to eliminate the opacity that plagues centralized exchanges—instead illuminated the most suspicious trade timing in crypto history. You can trace every transaction, every position size change, every profit withdrawal. Yet perfect visibility hasn’t provided perfect answers.
The crypto world promised transparency would eliminate market manipulation. Instead, it’s created a new category of mystery: trades you can see happening in real-time but can’t quite prove are illegal. When the technology meant to democratize finance becomes a window into potential corruption, you realize the problem was never just about seeing the trades—it was about who gets to make them first.
