One crypto whale took more than $160 million in profit by betting on the fall of Bitcoin and Ethereum.
According to Lookonchain, on October 11 it became known that a long-time BTC holder opened shorts totaling over $1.1 billion on the two largest cryptocurrencies by market cap.
How the Bitcoin Crash Brought the Trader $160 Million
The trader bet against the market, despite the recent rise of BTC and ETH and was right. In just 30 hours, both coins dropped sharply, and the profit from the trade was about $160 million.
After the market drop, the trader started closing positions, leaving only 821.6 BTC worth about $92 million.
Such accuracy sparked a wave of speculation — did the whale know in advance about the upcoming economic blow?
On Friday, Donald Trump announced 100% tariffs on Chinese imports, as well as new export restrictions for key IT sectors.
Trump’s Tariffs Scare Markets: $19.3 Billion in Liquidations in a Day
The announced tariffs, which will take effect on November 1, scared investors in both traditional and crypto markets. Risks soared — a massive sell-off began.
The price of Bitcoin fell to $105,262, but by the time of publication had recovered to $111,052.
Ethereum, Solana, Dogecoin and XRP followed suit — sharp drops crashed the market and led to the largest liquidation day in history.
In just 24 hours, more than 1.6 million traders were liquidated, and total losses reached $19.31 billion, according to CoinGlass.
Record liquidations in the crypto market. Source: CoinGlass
The biggest losses were suffered by long positions — $16.82 billion. Even short sellers lost $2.5 billion, despite the price drop.
Bitcoin accounted for $5.37 billion in liquidations, Ethereum — $4.43 billion. Losses for Solana were $2 billion. Traders dealing with HYPE lost $890.37 million, for XRP — $708.24 million.
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Amid the volatility, the Hyperliquid exchange became the main center of liquidations, processing $10.3 billion — more than half of all closed positions. Next were Bybit ($4.65 billion), Binance ($2.39 billion) and OKX ($1.21 billion).
This episode once again shows how much the market depends on geopolitics and major players. Even experienced traders in such conditions can either lose everything or suddenly hit a multi-million jackpot.
