The cryptocurrency trader who pushed the boundaries of Hyperliquid with a highly leveraged Ether (ETH) trade on March 12 has now taken a new multimillion-dollar position, this time in Chainlink (LINK), as indicated by onchain data.
On March 14, the anonymous whale, known on X as “ETH 50x Big Guy,” established long positions in LINK valued at around $31 million using 10 times leverage, according to data from a Web3 analytics service.
The trades were executed on Hyperliquid and GMX, two prominent perpetual exchanges, as noted in a March 14 post on X. In addition, the whale purchased approximately $12 million in LINK on the spot market.
In the following hours, the whale gradually reduced his LINK exposure through smaller swaps back into stablecoins, based on onchain data.
Source: Lookonchain
Related: Hyperliquid raises margin requirements following $4 million liquidation loss
Significant Trading Profits
On March 12, the unidentified trader liquidated a long position in ETH worth around $200 million, leading to a $4 million loss for Hyperliquid’s liquidity pool. The trader’s profits from this maneuver reached about $1.8 million.
According to the analytics service, the trader has accrued nearly $17 million in profits over the last month while using Hyperliquid.
This event shed light on the difficulties faced by perpetual trading platforms like Hyperliquid, which allow traders to leverage positions significantly beyond their initial capital.
Hyperliquid clarified that the trader’s actions did not constitute an exploit but were a foreseeable result of the trading platform’s mechanics under extreme market conditions.
In reaction to the losses, Hyperliquid announced on March 13 an adjustment to collateral rules for traders with active positions to prevent similar incidents in the future.
Since its launch in 2024, Hyperliquid’s flagship perpetual exchange has captured 70% of the market share, outperforming competitors like GMX and dYdX, based on a January report from an asset management firm.
Chainlink, recognized as the leading decentralized oracle service, experienced a surge in the price of its LINK token, increasing by over 150% following President Donald Trump’s victory in the US election. Since then, however, it has retraced much of those gains, dropping from nearly $30 per token in December to below $14 as of March 14, according to data from CoinGecko.
Currently, Chainlink’s market capitalization stands at approximately $8.7 billion.
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