HYPE whale holds $111M long, $58M profit, pulls $18.5M margin

A pseudonymous trader "watershedpath" holds a $111 million HYPE long on Hyperliquid with $58 million unrealized profit, per Arkham Intelligence data.

Arkham identified the position as the largest single long on HYPE on-chain, noting the trader has held it for nearly a full year — an unusually long duration for a leveraged perpetual trade.

Instead of closing the position, watershedpath withdrew $18.5 million in margin, reducing collateral while keeping exposure intact. The move lowers the liquidation threshold, leaving the trade more vulnerable to a sharp HYPE drawdown. HYPE traded at $82.06 at press time, up 46 percent over the past month and 16 percent in the last seven days, with 24-hour volume near $1.16 billion.

The $111 million position makes watershedpath a potential source of outsized volatility for HYPE. A forced liquidation or profit-taking unwind could cascade through Hyperliquid's order book, given the token's roughly $18 billion market capitalization. The margin withdrawal rather than a full exit suggests conviction, but it also raises the stakes if HYPE's price reverses.

The whale's behavior comes as Hyperliquid's platform expands. The exchange's perpetual markets covering oil, metals, forex, stock indices, and individual stocks have logged more than $480 billion in cumulative volume over the past ten months, according to the Hyperliquid Policy Council. The HPC recently filed comments urging the SEC and CFTC to adopt a shared classification framework for perpetual contracts, arguing that a contract's structure and trading mechanics — not merely its underlying asset — should determine its regulatory category.

On-chain activity around HYPE has been mixed. One wallet accumulated roughly 80,600 HYPE (about $5.53 million) from Coinbase Prime, while a wallet linked to Multicoin Capital sent 106,110 HYPE (about $8.41 million) to the exchange. Moving tokens to an exchange can suggest intent to sell or reposition, though it does not confirm an outcome.

The broader Hyperliquid network is also evolving. Kinetiq, the dominant liquid-staking protocol on HyperEVM, announced Elysium, a new Layer 2 built to raise throughput and tighten the connection to HyperCore. Elysium will run on HYPE as its native gas token, with a sequencer revenue split of 50 percent toward KNTQ buybacks and burns, 25 percent for ecosystem builders, and 25 percent to the Kinetiq treasury.

For HYPE traders, the key question is whether watershedpath's conviction holds. The position has survived nearly a year of price swings, and the margin withdrawal suggests the trader is extracting value without abandoning the trade. But with $58 million in paper gains at stake, the incentive to lock in profits grows with every dollar HYPE gains.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.