Leverage, Timing and Win Rate: An Analysis of the Trading Logic of Hyperliquid Whales

Author: Frank, PANews

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

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

These mysterious large holders, known as "whales," create ripples on the platform with their strong financial strength, unique trading strategies, and precise grasp of market dynamics. Their every move is not only a magnifying glass for market sentiment but also provides us with a window to observe how top traders strategize.

Analyze their distinctly different trading strategies, risk preferences, and success or failure logic. Here, PANews attempts to unveil a glimpse of their wealth secrets and explore what ordinary investors can learn from their experiences and lessons.

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

This trader is an industry OG who has been posting about Bitcoin on Twitter since 2014, and the content style looks like that of a loyal Bitcoin fan. For some unknown reason, @qwatio chose to go silent on social media starting in 2015. It wasn't until March 2025, when a high-leverage short on Bitcoin profited over $9 million, that it sparked intense discussion on social media. On-chain investigator ZachXBT indicated that the source of funds was related to hackers, and @qwatio chose to reveal their identity in response to the doubts.

@qwatio's trading style is characterized by high risk and high returns, often using 50x leverage, and has a keen ability to capture market movements. For example, on March 20, 2025, before and after the Federal Reserve's interest rate decision, he shorted BTC at a price of $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%. As a result, he is referred to on social media as "Hyperliquid 50X Guy."

From his trading strategy, @qwatio excels at capturing event-driven and fleeting opportunities, and also demonstrates a unique market insight. The aforementioned battle that brought him fame was based on the expectation of the Federal Reserve's interest rate decision, inferring that a fleeting opportunity would arise in the market, which he capitalized on repeatedly to achieve substantial profits in the fluctuations. At the same time, he can decisively enter the market during times of extreme fear. When Ethereum dropped to around 1500, the market was bearish on Ethereum. @qwatio chose to spend 5.5 million dollars to buy 3715 Ether (average price 1493.5) and sold it at a price of 2502 dollars, making a profit of 3.74 million dollars.

On May 12, the results of the China-U.S. trade negotiations were announced, and a wave of turbulence is expected in the foreseeable market. @qwatio shorted Bitcoin at $104,094 and subsequently made a profit of $1.18 million.

As of May 13, @qwatio has made approximately $2.82 million in profits on Hyperliquid. In summary, @qwatio's trading is not frequent, having only made 3 to 4 trades in the span of 2 months. However, each trade has accurately predicted a short-term trend, and with great skill comes great risk, as liquidation was just a hair's breadth away. That said, this style is not suitable for typical users to imitate, as he often incurs losses in his trades involving various 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 prefers relatively larger cycles (several 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 his main source of profit.

As of May 13, the open positions in PEPE have brought him an unrealized profit of 23 million USD, far exceeding the profits of BTC and other mainstream tokens.

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

In addition, James Wynn established the largest user vault on Hyperliquid (Moon Capital), but unlike his personal precise operations, the performance of this vault is currently not ideal. Opening a long position on BTC at a price of 103533, as of May 13, the yield of this position is approximately a loss of 10%. The loss is about $960,000. Over the past month, the overall yield of this vault has been -8%. Nevertheless, it still attracted $10 million in deposits, of which $9.2 million 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 opportunities for market upswings. For example, he opened a 40x long position when the BTC price was 94,000 dollars, and when the price rose above 100,000 dollars, he had floating profits of 5.4 million dollars. Although his win rate is not high (about 47%), he is still able to achieve significant profits through large positions and high leverage.

James Wynn is known in the community as a "legendary trader," but his trading success has also come with some controversy. Some community members accuse him of profiting from the trust of the community, such as promoting Meme coins to pump up prices and then sell off, like the baby pepe pump and dump incident in 2024. However, he has responded to this by calling it 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 each time. Coupled with his keen insights into market changes, this has led to 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 may also suffer significant losses.

The Mysterious Giant Whale Coming to Light: Mainstream Coins Testing the Waters and Swings Under Low Leverage

This mysterious giant whale is another major player that often 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 USD to go long on ETH. Subsequently, the address made over 8.16 million USD in profit within a week by going long on XRP and SOL.

From an operational style perspective, this whale shares the same characteristics of having strong financial strength, with the initial capital reaching 36 million USD. Moreover, this mysterious whale is not keen on extreme speculation for short-term operations, but rather chooses low leverage and extends the holding period to maintain profits.

In terms of the choice of trading varieties, this whale has only traded three mainstream altcoins: ETH, XRP, and SOL, up to this point. Among them, ETH has made a profit, while XRP and SOL have incurred losses. From the trading strategy perspective, 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 levels during the market surge. As a result, with the market correction, this whale may have also experienced psychological fluctuations. Therefore, they closed all orders; although the final result was a profit, from the perspective of operational style and thinking, it is not worth learning.

The resolute contrarian in the market: Can the heavy-spending bearish whales ultimately come out on top?

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

Starting from May 10, this whale began to inject $50.5 million into Hyperliquid for shorting. The total amount of the positions exceeds $230 million. Among them, the holding amount in BTC exceeds $110 million. This whale seems to be a steadfast bear in the market, with all $50.5 million of funds invested in positions and has not closed the positions for several days.

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

Of course, we cannot conclude whether this giant whale's ultimate direction is right or wrong. We can only continue to observe in the future to see whether this mysterious market contrarian is a prophet who predicts the market in advance or a big spender acting on impulse.

Looking at these "formidable" whales on Hyperliquid, we can easily find that their trading strategies are all different, and there is no one-size-fits-all "holy grail". However, overall, whales generally prefer to choose several more liquid tokens such as BTC, ETH, SOL, and XRP as their targets. As for trading styles, everyone has their own set of habits; some are keen on high leverage, while others prefer to predict the market in advance. Nevertheless, the positions and investments of these whales clearly favor a risky, blood-on-the-edge type of adventure, which is not advisable for ordinary investors and cannot be replicated. After all, in the turbulent ocean of cryptocurrency filled with dangers and rapids, only by continuously learning and forming one's own trading system can one navigate steadily through the tumultuous waves.