An anonymous Tornado Cash whale deposited $7 million into Hyperliquid this morning, preparing to open a large Bitcoin long position. According to Lookonchain and Onchain Lens, the wallet is using aggressive 20x leverage and aims to profit from Bitcoin outperforming Ethereum.
Large holders often use mixers to transfer funds in order to move capital privately or prepare for cashing out. This case is unusual because the movement of these funds was recently traced to a series of addresses belonging to the hacker who stole $290 million from the derivatives platform Drift Protocol in April 2026.
Some blockchain researchers have warned against hastily drawing conclusions about the source of funds. There is currently no direct evidence: Tornado Cash is indeed effective at obscuring transaction trails, and the connection between wallets and specific hacking incidents is based only on indirect correlations in transaction volume.
An extremely complex scheme (even by North Korean standards)
After withdrawing 3,100 ETH from Tornado Cash to a new address, the anonymous trader exchanged the entire amount of Ethereum on the spot market via CoW Swap, locking in $6.92 million in USDC. The funds were then transferred to the decentralized exchange Hyperliquid to serve as collateral for future trades.
On this exchange, the whale did not attempt to predict market direction; instead, they split their collateral in half, opened a 20x full-position leverage, and established a position with a total value of approximately $26 million. The position consisted of a $12.84 million Bitcoin long entry at $75,762.20 and a $12.83 million Ethereum short position comprising 5,740 ETH.
As of now, this position remains valid. Bitcoin is still holding near its recent high, and the unrealized profits from long BTC positions have fully offset the drawdowns from short altcoin positions. In addition to this, the trader continues to receive regular premiums paid by other traders for holding a short ETH position, along with funding rate income.
This is a textbook example of a dominance pair trade—investors don’t care whether the entire industry is rising or falling; the only thing that matters is the spread—the price difference between these two largest cryptocurrencies.
This trade will profit if Bitcoin rises faster than Ethereum, or if Ethereum falls more sharply during a broader market decline.
However, no matter how elegant the mathematical model, 20x leverage always carries high risk. If Ethereum surges sharply while Bitcoin remains range-bound, Hyperliquid’s cross-margin system will trigger a forced liquidation within seconds, causing the investor to lose the entire $6.92 million. The liquidation prices for this position are $37,014.09 for Bitcoin and $3,343.60 for Ethereum.
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