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What happened today?

You know traders are bored when most of the conversation is around a degenerate whale throwing around hundreds of millions on leverage, but that’s where we’re at. Last week an incident involving this anonymous whale saw Hyperliquid’s HLP vault take on over $4 million in bad debt as he intentionally forced the liquidation of his own position, taking home $1.8 million himself. Not only did this piss off one of the most fanatic communities in the space, but he then decided to pour salt on the open wound by opening up a $400M short position. As is the spirit of crypto, some of the biggest traders in the industry banded together to try to liquidate the bear whale driving his position deep into the red— this highlights one obvious issue with onchain trading, which is that if everyone can see your position you can be hunted.

In this case though, I have a feeling not only does the anon in question know what’s happening, but he’s likely using it to his advantage. If he knows people are going to push the market up in an attempt to liquidate him, he can simply open a long on another exchange and profit significantly. It’s difficult to track this kind of thing as centralized exchanges are not nearly as transparent as something like Hyperliquid, but generally speaking people with access to this kind of capital aren’t stupid enough to advertise ways to take their money.

Trading Talk

One of the clear standouts from the market today is PLUME, which sits up 30% in the last 24 hours alone after being range-bound since launch. While ranges are painful in clear bull markets, the market of the last few weeks has been anything but that, and so Plume bouncing between $0.10 and $0.15 represented strength in the sea of red. This positive action is probably attributed to today’s announcement that YZi Labs (formerly known as Binance Labs) had made a strategic investment in the network, looking to help Plume achieve their goal of revolutionizing Real World Assets (RWAs).*

Interestingly, the biggest outperformer of the day is PancakeSwap, the largest native DEX on Binance’s BSC — in other words, two of the tokens up the most today are directly linked to Binance. It’s clear the exchange giant hasn’t lost any of its aura or influence on the market despite CZ leaving, and it’s definitely an ecosystem to continue to watch for the time being. The shenanigans around the CZ dog coin (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re probably better off) left a bad taste in memecoin traders’ mouths, but at the end of the day that is fast-moving mercenary capital anyway and probably doesn’t have much of an impact on the chain going forward.

Tweet of the Day

If there’s something all crypto natives love, it’s seeing a bear whale get liquidated.

Biggest Headlines

The Beluga intern has been hard at work gathering all the most important crypto news stories so you have them in one place!

The Majors

• Developer consensus may be converging on a Bitcoin soft fork proposal

• Standard Chartered cuts 2025 ether price target by 60% to $4,000

Alt Coins and Stocks

• Gemini appointed new CFO as crypto exchange reportedly eyes IPO

• Robinhood teams up with Kalshi to launch prediction markets hub focusing on politics, economics and sports

Regulatory

• Canary Capital files with SEC for what could be the first Sui ETF

Miscellaneous

• Four teens charged for alleged pistol-whipping, attempted Bitcoin robbery of OnlyFans influencer

New Beluga Starterpack

Beluga has teamed up with Walrus Protocol, a blockchain-based data storage solution incubated by Mysten Labs aiming to make onchain data storage cheaper and more efficient by leveraging the low fees and throughput of the Sui network.*

The content on this site is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice. While Beluga strives to ensure the accuracy and timeliness of information, there may be discrepancies when comparing our data to that of financial institutions, service providers, or specific product websites. Always consult with a professional before making any financial decisions.

Will McKinnon is the Head of Content for Beluga and has spent every day for many years trading coins. For that reason there are too many to name, however his largest holdings by a significant margin are Ethereum and Bitcoin. NFA DYOR

*Disclaimer: Plume and Walrus are paid partners of Beluga.