Key Takeaways:
A trader known as pension-usdt.eth lost $23.9 million on Hyperliquid after a 50,000 ETH short was liquidated in 12 seconds as ether rose 18%.
Hyperliquid's on-chain records show the forced closure ran from 04:51:03 to 04:51:15 UTC in five separate sales, with the final 1,417 ETH absorbed by the exchange's insurance fund after no buyers remained. The first 9,989 ETH closed at $2,193, then 20,698 at $2,209, then 15,830 at $2,214, then 1,871 at $2,236. Ether gained $43 over those 12 seconds, and every dollar higher made the remaining chunks more expensive to close.
The loss erased roughly half of the wallet's prior $49 million in short-selling profits, leaving the account with $35.61. It was part of a record $2.74 billion wave of short liquidations across the market in 24 hours.
The position had been open for 1,445 hours, or just over two months, through a stretch when bitcoin traded below $65,000 and betting against it looked like the easy side. Wednesday's Treasury buyback announcement ended that, with ether jumping 18% in 24 hours and bitcoin climbing from $64,000 to nearly $70,000.
The wallet, which trades under the display name "Pension Fund," had been one of the year's most successful short sellers. Its recent record included a $6 million gain on a 60,000 ETH short closed in June, $3.6 million on a 1,400 BTC short the same month, and $1.7 million on another bitcoin short in March. Blockchain tracker Lookonchain said the account had recorded a 23-win streak before the trade was wiped out.
The liquidation was not the largest of the day. A $48.8 million bitcoin position, also on Hyperliquid, was the biggest single casualty among $2.74 billion of shorts liquidated across the market in 24 hours — the largest wave of forced short closures in records going back to 2021. K33 Research's head of research, Vetle Lunde, said bitcoin futures saw nearly $1.1 billion in short liquidations in one day, the first time the figure passed $1 billion, exceeding the $757 million record from May 2021 and $694 million from November 2025.
The account now holds $35.61, down 100% over 30 days, on $16.48 million of losses against $111.76 million of volume traded in that window, according to Hyperliquid's leaderboard.
The episode shows how a single large leveraged position can move the market it trades against, with the trader's own forced buying helping push ether higher during the unwind. With bitcoin testing $70,000 and ether holding above $2,250, short sellers face a market where the Treasury's buyback program has reset the risk backdrop.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
