Latest news with #HyperLiquid
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Weekly Recap: Circle Scores Big on IPO Fever
It was a week of fortunes made, and fortunes lost, at CoinDesk. On the one hand, we had Circle, long a leading crypto company, hurtling to IPO and making bank. Its shares were priced at $110 at press time (up from $31 Wednesday), leading many to expect a summer and fall of crypto-themed IPOs. On the other, we saw HyperLiquid trader James Wynn go from having a $100 million BTC position one day to a massive loss the next. (Kids, beware the big, bad leverage monster). Most of the market portents looked good, though. Crypto money-raising season was in full swing. Groups doubled-down on the Bitcoin Treasury Strategy, not least Metaplanet, Japan's answer to Michael Saylor's Strategy. Solana's memecoin juggernaut, said it was lining up $1 billion at a $4 billion valuation. One of its children, Fartcoin, surged on rumors of a Coinbase listing. Crypto technology continued to get integrated into mainstream products. Prediction markets from Polymarket are coming to X and xAI. Uber, Apple, Airbnb and others said they were hoping to combine stablecoins into their payment offerings. Revolut said it would soon offer derivatives. And so on. Still, Trump and Musk dominated coverage as normal (probably to an unhealthy degree). On Thursday, Trump's media company Truth Social said it would launch its own Bitcoin ETF. (By Friday, it was set to issue more shares as well.) The Trump-Musk feud, which also broke this week, highlighted the U.S.'s precarious debt situation (a key driver for bitcoin's existence). But so far bitcoin, and dogecoin, prices are down on the news. Really anything is possible in the weeks ahead. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
HyperLiquid's Market Making Vault Grows by $250M in 2 Months Despite JELLY Fiasco
The yield-bearing vault created by decentralized exchange HyperLiquid has grown from $163 million to $418 million over the past two months despite centralization concerns around the JELLY market fiasco in March, data from DefiLlama shows. The vault, which acts as an internal market maker and gives depositors a yield, was underwater by $13.5 million after a user manipulated the index price of JELLY in March. HyperLiquid minimized these losses by forcibly closing the JELLY market, settling it at $0.0095 as opposed to $0.50 that was being fed to oracles via decentralized exchanges. This led to an exodus of capital from the HyperLiquid platform, total value locked (TVL) dropped from $510 million to $150 million while the HYPE token suffered a 20% downturn. But all was soon forgotten in part due to the emergence of James Wynn, a derivatives trader that made and lost $100 million on HyperLiquid in a week. His public trades and commentary generated a wealth of bullish sentiment around HyperLiquid as the platform managed to handle the nine-figure positions in terms of liquidity and slippage. Over that period, TVL increased along with HYPE, which is now up by 72% in the pat 30-days. The HyperLiquid vault is currently returning 13.42% in annual interest, beating various restaking protocols that offer around 9.1%.
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
How James Wynn's $100M Implosion Is Familiar Leverage Tale
Derivatives trader James Wynn emerged out of the woodworks a few weeks ago, flaunting 9-figure bitcoin positions on HyperLiquid as he went on a seemingly undefeatable run that culminated in around $100 million worth of profit. But that run, as is often the case with highly-leveraged crypto derivative trading, came to a shocking end — Wynn liquidated his entire account despite BTC only moving by a couple of percent. "I've decided to give perp trading a break," Wynn wrote on X after the final blow up. "Its been a fun ride. Approximately $4 million into $100 million and then back down to a total account loss of $17.5 million." Wynn's story is nothing new. In 2021, for instance, the industry saw the public rise of Alex Wice — a poker player turned derivatives trader — that also lost $100 million after making huge bets with leverage. And even in 2017, in the BitMEX trollbox days, pseudonymous figures like SteveS and TheBoot used to boast about their 10s of millions in profit and loss before forever fading into obscurity. Cryptocurrency derivatives can be an incredibly useful tool; if a trader holds 500 BTC ($52 million) and believes the market will go down, they can hedge their position by going short -- reducing exposure without having to sell their spot assets, which in itself could cause slippage or front running. An array of delta neutral strategies can also be employed like the classic basis trade that became popular amongst institutional traders on the bitcoin CME futures market, which involve simultaneously going long and short to harvest the funding rate as a yield. But issues begin to form when crypto traders, the majority of whom are inexperienced retail traders, use platforms that offer up to 100x leverage. Imagine a newcomer had $5,000 in trading capital, sure, they could make a few intraday trades and make $50 or $100 per trade, but if they used 100x they could make $50,000 per 10% move. This is the slippery slope of gambling-induced emotional trading that many fall into. Data from NewTrading shows that just 3% of day traders make a profit and 1% do so consistently. And the game becomes even tougher when, in this case, traders are opening positions worth hundreds of millions of dollars. James Wynn's downfall came in part due to his inability to deal with the emotional swings of trading, but also the sheer size of his positions. Wynn would often post about getting partially liquidated and re-opening the position at a worse break-even point. This is indicative of a trader out of his depth through over-leverage. As Wynn used in some cases 40x leverage, his liquidation point left no margin for error, this meant that astute traders or trading firms could hunt his liquidation point and force him into an impulsive trade. HyperLiquid is a relatively liquid derivatives venue, it has millions in market depth within 1% of an asset's price but it does not have hundreds of million, which was required to absorb Wynn's leveraged positions. In reality, Wynn's trade thesis was based around the Bitcoin Las Vegas event and any potential announcements that could lift bitcoin above a new record high. If this came into fruition, Wynn would have had hundreds of millions in unrealized profit, but unfortunately in his case, bitcoin began to slump during the conference as speeches from Michael Saylor and Ross Ulbricht failed to spark any upside momentum. The lack of volatility and Wynn's insatiable appetite to keep betting led to him getting chopped out of the market. His losses became so notable that one trader decided to counter trade every position by going short at the same time as Wynn went long, this trader made $17 million, according to Lookonchain. As the sun finally set on Wynn's derivatives journey he announced he was "going back to the trenches" to trade meme coins, of course. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Binance Futures List HYPE Token Amid Feverish Trading Activity in Hyperliquid
Binance Futures listed HYPE, the native token of rival derivatives exchange HyperLiquid, on Friday. HYPE rose by 77.5% over the past 30 days as it made its way into the 15 largest cryptocurrencies by market cap. The Binance listing is a USD-margined perpetual contact that offers up to 75x leverage. Prominent trader and HyperLiquid supporter Flood said on X that the first exchange that lists HYPE spot markets will make "$100 million in fees" in the first year. HYPE was unmoved by the announcement; it is down by 4.3% over the past 24 hours in line with a wider crypto market slump. HyperLiquid notched $11 billion in perpetual trading volume during the same period as it rapidly emerges as this cycle's decentralized derivatives exchange of choice. Binance futures, meanwhile, remains the largest centralized exchange with $91 billion in trading volume over the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
How $330M BTC Hacker May Have Doubled Down on Monero Derivatives
There's something that stands out about Monday's suspicious transfer of more than 3,520 BTC ($330.7 million) to privacy coin monero (XMR), a conversion that blockchain sleuth ZachXBT said was probably linked to a hack: coordinated activity in the derivatives market. Monero, which obscures the sender's and recipient's addresses to provide an untraceable currency, has limited liquidity on exchanges, which makes it harder for users to transact without affecting the market and exposes them to slippage, the chance of the price changing for the worse before the deal is finalized. The decision to go through an illiquid cryptocurrency is unusual. Tether's USDT or ether (ETH) would have provided an easier, less-slippage-prone way of moving the funds about, and mixers such as Tornado Cash could help obscure the transaction path. Of course, stablecoins like USDT are also easier to intercept and freeze. Trading data, however, suggests there was more going on than a simple case of someone trying to launder stolen funds. The possible hacker very likely did encounter slippage during the transaction. Combined market depth, which measures order book liquidity over a given price range, was relatively low at around $1 million per 2% on both sides of the book. XRM surged by 45% due to the limited liquidity on exchanges, meaning they could have lost as much as 20% — $66 million — by purchasing XMR rather than a more-liquid token. For a more complete picture, take a look at derivative markets. While monero was surging, open interest — the number of outstanding futures and options contracts — in XMR on the main centralized exchanges more than doubled to $35.1 million, according to Coinalyze. A 45% rise in XMR's price should have boosted open interest only to $24.2 million instead of the figure it ended up at. Taking into account the $1 million in liquidations, someone, or some people, were already long on XMR to the tune of $11 million. While the price increase on that holding wouldn't have compensated for the full amount of slippage, it would help soften the blow. Moreover the figure doesn't take into account any positions that might have existed in decentralized exchanges, and let's not forget the funds were probably stolen in the first place, so the (assumed) perpetrators are still a couple of million dollars ahead. This is not the first time bad actors have flooded spot purchases to move the derivative needle. Last month a trader manipulated JELLY prices on decentralized exchange HyperLiquid. They bought JELLY on illiquid exchanges, tricking the pricing oracle to feed an inaccurate price to HyperLiquid and thus generating profit for holders of long positions. Both cases draw similarities to the $114 million exploit on Mango Markets in 2022, which involved a trader named Avi Eisenberg manipulating MNGO prices by borrowing assets using ill-gotten gains as collateral. Eisenberg was found guilty by a jury in 2024 and faces 20 years in prison. Sign in to access your portfolio
