James Wynn's $800M BTC Long

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Legendary trader JamesWynnReal is back again, this time with a 7,227 BTC long position on-chain worth over $800M. Despite making a public announcement to “leave the casino” while he was still up, he returned just hours later, depositing over $27M in USDC into Hyperliquid over the day. As per his usual trading style, he also has a $10M long on kPEPE open on Hyperliquid. He is currently down a total of $4.8M in unrealized losses on both positions.

Holding a position of this magnitude incurs significant carrying costs known as funding rates. In perpetual futures markets, if the majority of traders are long, they must pay periodic fees to short sellers to maintain price parity with the spot market. For a position exceeding $800M, these fees can rapidly accumulate, meaning the trader needs the price to rise not just to make a profit, but simply to break even against the hourly cost of leverage.

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JamesWynnReal is known for his high leverage degenerate bets on-chain, having been the first person to hold more than $1B in a single Hyperliquid perp position on both a BTC long and short in two separate trades over the past week. Despite having a public liquidation price on all of his trades, he has not been liquidated yet.

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However, the transparency of decentralized ledgers introduces a unique strategic risk known as "liquidation hunting." Because his entry price and liquidation point are visible to the entire market, sophisticated market makers or opposing traders can see exactly where he will be forced to sell. This visibility can incentivize predatory trading behavior, where opposing whales attempt to induce short-term volatility specifically to trigger a forced sell-off at known price levels.