Author: Frank, PANews
As the market sentiment warms up, the whale operations on Hyperliquid have once again sparked market attention.
These mysterious large investors, known as "whales", with their strong financial resources, unique trading strategies, and precise grasp of market pulse, have created ripples on the platform. Their every move not only serves as a magnifying glass for market sentiment but also provides a window to observe how top traders compete.
PANews attempts to unveil a corner of their wealth code and explore what experiences and lessons ordinary investors can draw from them by analyzing their vastly different trading methods, risk appetites, and success-failure logic.
Short-term Sniper @qwatio: The "50X Guy" and His Event-Driven High-Leverage Art
This trader is an industry OG who has been posting about Bitcoin on Twitter since 2014, with content style suggesting a loyal Bitcoin fan. For unknown reasons, @qwatio went silent on social media in 2015. Until March 2025, after making over $9 million by shorting Bitcoin with high leverage, which sparked intense social media discussion, and with blockchain investigator ZachXBT suggesting his funds were linked to hacking, @qwatio chose to reveal his identity to respond to doubts.
@qwatio's trading style is characterized by high risk and high returns, often using 50x leverage, with a keen ability to capture market opportunities. For instance, around the Federal Reserve rate decision on March 20, 2025, he shorted BTC at $84,566, closed the position at a profit of $81,500 when the price dropped to $82,000, then went long at $82,200 and closed when the price rebounded to $85,000, gaining an additional $921,000, totaling a 164% return. He was thus dubbed "Hyperliquid 50X Guy" on social media.
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From his trading strategy, @qwatio excels at capturing event-driven and short-term opportunities, demonstrating unique market insight. The aforementioned fame-making battle involved using the Federal Reserve rate decision's expectations to predict short-term market opportunities and repeatedly operate, gaining huge profits in the wave. He also decisively enters the market during extreme panic. When Ethereum dropped to around $1,500 and the market was bearish, @qwatio spent $5.5 million to buy 3,715 Ethereum (average price $1,493.5) and sold at $2,502, profiting $3.74 million.
On May 12, with the Sino-US trade consultation results announced and predictable market volatility, @qwatio shorted Bitcoin at $104,094 and subsequently profited $1.18 million.
As of May 13, @qwatio has profited about $2.82 million on Hyperliquid. In summary, his operations are not frequent, basically only 3-4 times in two months. However, each operation precisely predicts a short-term trend, with bold skills that keep liquidation just a hair's breadth away. However, this style is not suitable for ordinary users to imitate, as he often incurs losses in altcoin trades.
Legend and Controversy: James Wynn's MEME Coin Hunting and Large Capital Operations
James Wynn has been active on Hyperliquid since March 2025. In terms of trading style, he tends towards relatively longer cycles (several days) and, besides mainstream tokens, enjoys betting on MEME-themed tokens like TRUMP, Fartcoin, and PEPE. The high volatility of MEME tokens seems to be his primary source of profit.
As of May 13, his unrealized gains from the PEPE long position reached $23 million, far exceeding the returns of mainstream tokens like BTC.
In terms of leverage usage, James Wynn appears more conservative, seemingly preferring to set different leverage multiples for different volatility levels. For example, he set 40x leverage for BTC, while only 10x for PEPE.
Additionally, James Wynn established the largest user vault (Moon Capital) on Hyperliquid. Unlike his personal precise operations, this vault's current position performance is not ideal. Going long on BTC at $103,533, the position's return is approximately a 10% loss as of May 13, losing about $960,000. Over the past month, the vault's overall return is -8%. Despite this, it has attracted $10 million in deposits, with $9.2 million being James Wynn's own.
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Overall, James Wynn's earnings on Hyperliquid reached $45 million. His trading strategy mainly focuses on long positions, capturing market upward moments. For instance, he opened a 40x long position when BTC was at $94,000 and had a floating profit of $5.4 million when the price rose above $100,000. Although his win rate is not high (around 47%), he still achieves huge profits through large positions and high leverage.
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James Wynn is known in the community as a "legendary trader", but his trading success is accompanied by certain controversies. Some community members accuse him of exploiting community trust for profit, such as promoting MEME coins to raise prices before selling, like the 2024 baby pepe pump and dump incident. He personally dismisses these as nonsense. Currently, these controversies and responses remain unverifiable.
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Overall, James Wynn's successful trading also benefits from his large positions, often opening trades of tens or hundreds of millions. Combined with his keen market change insights, this has created his high returns. Sufficient margin also sets a high liquidation price threshold. This style helps him achieve a higher win rate, but if trend judgment is incorrect, he can also suffer significant losses.
Emerging Mysterious Whale: Mainstream Coin Trials with Low Leverage
This mysterious whale is another large investor frequently appearing in news briefs. However, this whale only recently became active on Hyperliquid, initially drawing attention by spending over $8 million to go long on ETH. Subsequently, by going long on XRP and SOL, he profited over $8.16 million in a week.
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In terms of trading style, this whale similarly has substantial financial resources, with initial position funds reaching $36 million. Moreover, he is not keen on extreme short-term operations but chooses low leverage and extended holding times to maintain profits.
In terms of trading varieties, this whale has currently only traded three mainstream altcoins: ETH, XRP, and SOL. ETH was profitable, while XRP and SOL incurred losses. From the trading strategy perspective, this whale seems indecisive, initially only opening an ETH position, then choosing to go long on XRP and SOL at high points during a market surge. As the market pulled back, the whale likely experienced psychological fluctuations. Thus, all orders were closed. Although the final result was profitable, the operational style and thinking are not worth learning.
Market's Determined Contrarian: Can the Whale Who Heavily Shorted Laugh Last?
Compared to the whales previously introduced, this whale can be considered a temporary negative example. As of May 13th, data shows that this address has unrealized losses of $3.12 million by shorting BTC, ETH, and SOL.
Starting from May 10th, this whale began injecting $50.5 million into Hyperliquid for shorting. The total position amount exceeds $230 million. Among them, the position on BTC is over $110 million. This whale seems to be a determined market shorter, with all $50.5 million invested in positions and holding without closing for several days.
However, due to substantial margin, the address's liquidation price is difficult to reach (BTC liquidation price at $142,000, Ethereum at $4,254, SOL at $294). In terms of overall position profit and loss, the current loss is only around 6%.
Of course, we cannot conclude whether this whale's direction is ultimately right or wrong. We can only continue to observe and see if this mysterious market contrarian is a prophet predicting the market or just acting recklessly with deep pockets.
Looking across these "dominating" whales on Hyperliquid, we can easily see that their trading strategies vary, with no universal "holy grail". However, overall, whales generally prefer tokens with higher liquidity like BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP. In terms of trading style, everyone has their own habits, with some favoring high leverage and others preferring to predict the market in advance. But these whales' positions and investments are clearly adventurous, which is not advisable or replicable for ordinary investors. After all, in the treacherous crypto ocean, only by continuously learning and forming one's own trading system can one navigate steadily through the stormy waves.
