Deconstructing the Trading Secrets and Strategies of Hyperliquid's Top Whales: The Art of Leverage and Timing

Author: Frank, PANews

As the market conditions improve, the whale activities on Hyperliquid have once again attracted the attention of the market.

These mysterious big players known as "whales" create ripples within the platform with their substantial financial strength, unique trading strategies, and precise grasp of market trends. Their every move not only serves as a magnifying glass for market sentiment but also provides us with a window to observe how top traders engage in their games.

Analyze their distinctly different trading styles, risk preferences, and logic of success and failure.

Short-term sniper @qwatio: The event-driven and high-leverage art of "50x brother"

This trader is an industry OG, having started posting about Bitcoin on Twitter since 2014, and the style of the content looks like that of a loyal Bitcoin fan. For some reason, @qwatio chose to go silent on social media starting in 2015. It wasn't until March 2025, when a profit of over $9 million was made by shorting Bitcoin with high leverage, that it sparked intense discussions on social media. On-chain investigator ZachXBT indicated that the source of the funds was related to hackers, leading @qwatio to choose to reveal their identity to respond to the doubts.

@qwatio's trading style is characterized by high risk and high returns, often using 50x leverage, with a keen ability to capture market movements. For example, around the Federal Reserve's interest rate decision on March 20, 2025, he shorted Bitcoin when the price was $84,566, closing the position for a profit of $81,500 when the price dropped to $82,000. He then went long at $82,200, closing the position for an additional profit of $921,000 when the price rebounded to $85,000, achieving a total return of 164%. He is also referred to as "Hyperliquid 50X Guy" on social media.

From his trading strategy, @qwatio is skilled at capturing event-driven and fleeting opportunities, demonstrating a unique market insight. The aforementioned famous battle involved taking advantage of the expectations surrounding the Federal Reserve's interest rate decision to infer that a fleeting opportunity would arise, allowing for repeated operations and significant profits within the trading range. At the same time, he is also able to decisively enter the market during times of extreme panic. When Ethereum fell to around 1500, the market was bearish on Ethereum. @qwatio chose to spend $5.5 million to buy 3715 Ethereum (average price 1493.5) and sold it at a price of $2502, making a profit of $3.74 million.

On May 12, the results of the China-US trade negotiations were announced, and the foreseeable market will experience a wave of volatility. @qwatio chose to short Bitcoin at $104,094 and subsequently made a profit of $1.18 million.

As of May 13, @qwatio has made a profit of approximately $2.82 million on Hyperliquid. In summary, @qwatio's operations are not frequent, with only about 3 to 4 trades made in two months. However, each trade has accurately predicted a short-term trend, showing boldness in taking risks, with liquidation being just a step away. Nevertheless, this style is not suitable for general users to mimic, as he often incurs losses in a few trades involving altcoins.

Legend and Controversy Coexist: 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, James Wynn tends to prefer relatively larger cycles (a few days), and besides mainstream tokens, he also enjoys betting on MEME-themed tokens like TRUMP, Fartcoin, and PEPE. The high volatility of MEME tokens seems to be a major source of his profits.

As of May 13, the open positions in PEPE long positions have brought him an unrealized profit of 23 million dollars. This far exceeds the profits of other mainstream tokens like BTC.

However, in terms of leveraging, James Wynn is clearly more conservative; he seems to prefer setting different leverage multiples for different volatilities. For example, he set a 40x leverage for opening positions in BTC, while only a 10x leverage for PEPE.

In addition, James Wynn has established the largest user vault on Hyperliquid (Moon Capital), but unlike his personal precise operations, the performance of this vault's positions is currently not ideal. Opening a long position on BTC at the price of 103533, as of May 13, the yield of this position is approximately a loss of 10%. The loss is about 960,000 USD. Over the past month, the overall yield of this vault is -8%. Even so, it has still attracted deposits of 10 million USD, of which 9.2 million USD is James Wynn's own.

Overall, James Wynn's earnings on Hyperliquid reached 45 million dollars. His trading strategy mainly focuses on long positions, capturing market uptrends. For example, he opened a 40x long position when the BTC price was 94,000 dollars, and when the price rose to over 100,000 dollars, he had an unrealized profit of 5.4 million dollars. Although his trading win rate is not high (around 47%), he is still able to achieve enormous profits through large positions and high leverage.

James Wynn is known in the community as a "legendary trader," but his trading success is also accompanied by a certain amount of controversy. Some community members accuse him of exploiting the trust of the community for profit, such as promoting Meme coins to pump the price and then sell off, like the baby pepe pump and dump incident in 2024. However, he himself responded that this is nonsense. As of now, these controversies and responses remain unverified.

Overall, James Wynn's successful trades are also attributed to his large positions, often opening with tens of millions or even over a hundred million. Coupled with his keen insights into market changes, this has resulted in his high returns. Additionally, sufficient margin allows his liquidation price insurance to reach a very high threshold. This style helps him achieve a relatively high win rate, but if he misjudges the trend, he can also face significant losses.

The Mysterious Giant Whale Revealing Its Edge: Mainstream Coins Testing the Waters and Swinging Under Low Leverage

This mysterious giant whale is another big player that frequently appears in news flashes. However, this whale only started to become active on Hyperliquid in the past few days, initially drawing attention for spending over 8 million dollars to go long on ETH. Since then, the address has also made over 8.16 million dollars in profit within a week by going long on XRP and SOL.

In terms of trading style, this whale shares the characteristic of having strong financial capabilities, with an initial investment reaching 36 million USD. Moreover, this mysterious whale does not prefer extreme speculation for short-term trading; instead, it opts for low leverage and extends holding periods to maintain profits.

From the perspective of trading variety selection, this whale has only traded three mainstream altcoins: ETH, XRP, and SOL, up to this point. Among them, ETH was profitable, while XRP and SOL incurred losses. In terms of trading strategy, this whale seems to lack decisiveness; initially, they only opened a position in ETH and later chose to go long on XRP and SOL at high prices during a market surge. As a result, with the market correction, this whale may have also experienced psychological fluctuations. Consequently, they closed all orders. Although the final result was profitable, from the perspective of operational style and thinking, it is not worth learning.

The firm contrarians of the market: Can the short-selling whales who spend heavily laugh last?

Compared to the giant whale introduced earlier, this whale can be considered a temporary cautionary tale. As of May 13, data shows that this address has incurred a floating loss of 3.12 million USD by shorting BTC, ETH, and SOL.

Starting from May 10, this whale began injecting $50.5 million into Hyperliquid for short selling. The total amount of the combined positions exceeds $230 million. Among them, the position amount on BTC exceeds $110 million. This whale seems to be a staunch bear in the market, with all $50.5 million invested in positions, and has not closed the positions for several days.

However, due to the substantial margin, the liquidation prices for that address are also relatively difficult to reach (the liquidation price for BTC is $142,000, for Ethereum it is $4,254, and for SOL it is $294). In terms of the overall position's profit and loss, the current loss is only about 6%.

Of course, we cannot conclude whether the direction of this giant whale is right or wrong. We can only continue to observe and see whether this mysterious market contrarian is a prophet who predicts the market in advance or someone who acts impulsively due to their wealth.

Looking at these "powerful whales" on Hyperliquid, it is not difficult to find that their trading strategies vary greatly, and there is no universally applicable "holy grail". However, overall, whales generally prefer to choose a few more liquid tokens such as BTC, ETH, SOL, and XRP as their trading targets. In terms of trading style, everyone has their own set of habits; some are keen on high leverage while others prefer to predict the market in advance. However, the positions and investments of these whales clearly favor a risky approach akin to licking blood off a knife's edge, which is not advisable for ordinary investors and cannot be replicated. After all, in the treacherous and turbulent sea of cryptocurrency, only by continuously learning and forming one's own trading system can one navigate steadily through the raging waves.