Hyperliquid Whale Down $9 Million This Week Flips to a 20x Tesla Bet

The Nitty Gritty of the Matter

Bitcoin.com News first covered this wallet on Sunday, when it held a 40x bitcoin long worth about $98 million, roughly 1.6% from liquidation. The trades since then, pulled from the wallet’s onchain history, appear to read like one bad call after another:

• Oct. 15: A short on Coreweave (CRWV) closes for a loss of about $1.58 million.
• Oct. 16: The trader cuts 1,188 $BTC at an average of $80,954 for a realized loss of about $1.73 million, and trims an ether long for another $626,000 loss.
• Oct. 17, 21:35 UTC: The rest of the ether long gets liquidated. Lookonchain put the total ether loss at $1.08 million.
• Oct. 18, 16:17 to 21:12 UTC: The remaining 1,355.6 $BTC long closes at an average of about $80,945.
• Oct. 18, 22:19 UTC onward: New longs open on Tesla, the Roundhill Memory ETF (DRAM) and the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X fund (SOXL).

Onchain trackers tallied the exit at a $3.26 million loss. Hyperliquid portfolio data on Hyperdash shows the wallet down about $9.53 million over the past week and $6.52 million over the past month.

The bitcoin sale landed right before a bounce when the asset was trading near $82,700 earlier today (about 2.2% above where the trader sold). On a 1,355.6 $BTC position, that move would have been worth roughly $2.4 million.

Bitcoin.com News noted over the weekend that the market sat at a bull-bear standoff near $81,500. This trader picked a side on the way down, then left before the market picked a direction.

Why Tesla and Why Now

The new positions are on Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 markets, builder-deployed perpetual futures that let traders take leveraged positions on stocks around the clock. According to Lookonchain, the trader went in with maximum leverage and as of Monday morning, the book looked like this:

• Tesla: 96,522 units, worth about $34.6 million, entered at $360.23 with 20x isolated leverage. Liquidation sits near $350.74.
• DRAM: 158,560 units, worth about $7.6 million, at 20x. Up about $265,000.
• SOXL: 38,530 units, worth about $3.9 million, at 10x. Up about $291,000.

The chip bets are in profit, but the Tesla bet, by far the biggest, is down about $204,000, with the Hyperliquid mark near $358.

The catalyst is obvious with Tesla’s official filing saying it will post third-quarter results after the market close on Wednesday, Oct. 21.

The 2% Problem

Tesla closed Friday at $354.72, down from $378.03 on Oct. 12. That close was only about 1.1% above this trader’s liquidation price and from the current mark, a drop of a little over 2% wipes out the position.

The account backing all three bets holds about $2.83 million in equity against roughly $46 million in exposure. Lastly, earlier in the cycle, the same wallet withdrew $9,999,999 on Sept. 26, and it is still up about $2.18 million all-time on more than $1.18 billion in volume. The cushion from the good months is gone, though.