Machi Big Brother Turns $150K into $12.72M

Original author: angelilu, Foresight News

As the market recovery tide rolls in, undercurrents on-chain have already surged into towering waves. Machi Big Brother has once again become the protagonist of on-chain discourse.

Over the past ten months, this crypto whale has been pounded underwater by nearly every wave, with a track record of continuous losses like a heavy report card. But in last week's one-sided market, leveraging $150,000 in principal, he rolled it into a $12.72 million long position within three days through extreme leverage, netting a single-trade profit of $12.5 million—an 84x return on principal.

As of 18:00 on Aug. 24, the Hyperliquid address for machibigbrother.eth shows total assets frozen at $10.07 million, backed by a $124 million long position. Leverage is razor-thin, and positions are massive—this single account's fluctuations are a concentrated slice of current market sentiment, liquidity battles, and risk appetite. On-chain numbers don't lie; they reflect both frenzy and calm in the position data.

Current Position: $10 Million Supporting $133 Million

Different analysts have slightly different figures. According to analyst Yu Jin's data, Machi Big Brother has lost a cumulative $35 million longing ETH over the past 10 months, narrowing to about $24 million after this profit.

Real-time data from HypurrScan on-chain shows his current position composition more clearly (data captured at 18:00 on Aug. 24, 2026):

The four positions total $123.72 million, with an overall unrealized profit of about $1.435 million at current prices. But breaking it down: HYPE, BTC, and PUMP have all fallen below their breakeven prices, while only ETH remains 2.9% above its breakeven. All profits are actually carried by the ETH position (unrealized profit of about $2.36 million), while the other three combined show an unrealized loss of $920,000.

Additionally, to maintain these four long positions, he has paid about $256,000 in funding fees—the holding cost of perpetual contracts, deducted hourly regardless of price movement, and the longer the position is held, the more is deducted.

The most critical factor is the "liquidation price": if the price falls to this level, the system will automatically liquidate his position without his consent. The tightest among the four is ETH—$2,229, about 10% from the current price. And ETH alone accounts for 59% of his total position, making it the account's red line.

Converted to leverage multiple: $9.44 million in principal supports a $123.72 million position, for overall leverage of about 13.1x. This means if ETH drops from $2,463 to $2,229—a $234 decline—the $12.5 million he made in these three days, along with his previous principal, would be wiped out.

Strategy Unchanged, Risks Remain

It's important to note that Machi Big Brother's profit this time was built through "rolling positions." Rolling means opening a leveraged position and not withdrawing unrealized profits, but letting them serve directly as additional margin to automatically support larger positions; as the price rises, the position expands, compounding in this way.

Its mathematical characteristic is—exponential when winning, all at once when losing. Because each addition is built on the previous unrealized profit, once the market reverses, it deducts not only the principal but also all the rolled profits, simultaneously. Turning $150,000 into $12.72 million requires several consecutive correct calls; turning $12.72 million back to $150,000 theoretically requires only one.

Last week's ETH rebound from the bottom provided the ideal environment for this structure: one-sided, continuous, and without pullbacks.

Although this operation gave him an unrealized profit of $11 million, don't forget that as the "on-chain liquidation king," Machi Big Brother has repeatedly gone from large profits to massive losses. In mid-September 2025, his account peaked near $60 million (unrealized profit over $44–45 million). Then in the market crash on Oct. 11, XPL, ETH, and other long positions were liquidated, turning from a profit of about $15 million to a loss of over $11 million, with profits evaporating rapidly.

His trading style is characterized by high leverage (often 25x–40x), extreme bullishness, high win rate but poor profit/loss ratio, and adding margin or averaging down instead of cutting losses when losing, leading to "small wins, big losses" and frequent liquidations.

In November 2025, Lookonchain monitored that he was force-liquidated 71 times in a single month on Hyperliquid, ranking first across the entire network.

Currently, his cumulative losses remain large, and trading discipline remains unchanged. On-chain data is public and transparent, but volatility is high.

The Two Weeks of Selling Apes to Cover Margin

One highlight of this story is Machi Big Brother's own halo, while another highlight is the tale of turning small principal into a huge position. But rewind two weeks, and he was selling Bored Apes one by one:

On Aug. 5, he sold BAYC #5670 for 9 ETH—his purchase cost over three years ago was 84.99 ETH, a loss of 89.4%;

On Aug. 13, he sold BAYC #5715 for 8.3 ETH, about $15,500; the original cost was 34.17 ETH, about $64,600, a loss of 75.7%.

This was his daily routine in the first half of August.

The fire-sale of BAYC can be traced back even earlier. According to Lookonchain statistics, in June he sold 34 BAYC at a loss, receiving about 326 ETH but with an overall loss of about 399 ETH, mainly to add margin to his high-leverage ETH long position on Hyperliquid and prevent or postpone liquidation. The community joked that he was "surviving by selling apes."

As of publication, according to OpenSea data, his NFT holdings total 4,357 items, but the NFT portion is worth only $3.17 million, including 128 BAYC (about $2.5 million) and 102 MAYC (about $288,000). By comparison, at his peak he held over three hundred BAYC.