Machi Big Brother's Comeback: From $60K to $10M in Days—Can High Leverage Win the Turnaround?

Author: Nancy, PANews

"Machi Big Brother" Huang Licheng is in the news again. But this time, the reason for trending isn't the familiar liquidation story—it's a hundredfold comeback.

In just a few days, he turned an account that once had less than $60,000 back into the tens of millions of dollars. For an "on-chain contrarian indicator" who has experienced nearly 500 forced liquidations and accumulated tens of millions of dollars in losses, such a turnaround is indeed a bit unexpected.

However, while the account balance can be rewritten, the trading style is not so easy to change. After the comeback, Huang Licheng remains the familiar high-leverage player, and how long this comeback can last remains unknown.

Assets surged over a hundredfold in days, yet a single account still carries tens of millions in losses

Seizing last week's one-sided rally in the crypto market, Huang Licheng finally welcomed a long-awaited "turnaround moment."

HypurrScan on-chain data shows that on August 18, Huang Licheng's account was once left with less than $60,000 due to liquidation. As the market reversed strongly, his account assets soared to $12.1 million, achieving a net profit in the tens of millions of dollars. As of now, the account still maintains a profit of about $10.5 million, a return of about 175 times.

This strong rebound allowed Huang Licheng to rewrite the "liquidation script" into a "comeback story." Although the account's phased turnaround did not completely erase previous losses, it significantly narrowed them. From a recent peak of about $36.64 million in losses, it recovered to about $26.12 million currently, reducing Huang Licheng's losses by more than $10 million in a short period.

And this account recovery still relies on Huang Licheng's most familiar rolling long positions. This high-leverage compound position-adding strategy means not withdrawing or locking in floating profits after opening a position, but directly using floating profits as new margin to continue expanding long positions. Each time the price rises, the position is increased, creating a compounding effect of "profits generating more profits, and positions growing ever larger." When the trend is correct, this strategy can amplify returns geometrically; but once the market turns, the accumulated profits will shrink at the same alarming speed, and even the principal may be liquidated.

Judging from Huang Licheng's current positions, he clearly has no intention of easing off the high-leverage throttle.

HypurrScan data shows that his four positions have a combined notional value exceeding $108 million, with ETH and BTC main positions accounting for over 90%. The ETH long position has a notional value of about $56.04 million, using 25x leverage; the BTC long position is about $44.86 million, with leverage reaching 40x. In addition, he has allocated HYPE and PUMP as supplementary positions.

Currently, the four positions have a combined floating profit of about $1.874 million. Among them, ETH contributed $1.319 million, the main source of profit for the entire account. However, this position also bears a relatively high holding cost, having incurred about $237,000 in funding fees, equivalent to eating up about 18% of the floating profit; for BTC, the 40x leverage has brought over $550,000 in floating profit, but the current price is only about 1.17% away from the breakeven point, which is not a comfortable margin.

Overall, about $10.5 million in account assets supports a notional position of over $108 million, with overall leverage of about 10.3x. This means that once the market experiences a significant pullback, the combination of high leverage and cross-margin mode could not only cause a sharp drawdown in positions but also trigger cascading liquidations.

Nearly 500 liquidations, $80 million in losses—Huang Licheng keeps getting more reckless

In fact, the reason Huang Licheng's comeback attracted attention is largely because he has failed too many times.

In just over a year, this veteran crypto player has experienced nearly 500 forced liquidations, and his account has repeatedly fallen from tens of millions of dollars in floating profits to deep drawdowns amid violent market fluctuations, with cumulative losses once reaching about $80 million, and multiple times on the brink of zero. At the most extreme market conditions, he even set a record of being liquidated 10 times in 8 hours.

As a staunch Ethereum bull, Huang Licheng has long concentrated his firepower on ETH long positions, and even after repeated liquidations, he rarely changes his bullish direction. He once publicly joked that he now cuts his own hair to save money and puts the savings into going long on ETH.

As a major Ethereum bull, Huang Licheng has focused his main firepower on ETH long positions, persistently going long but constantly being liquidated, with ETH-related losses reaching about $35 million over the past 10 months. He once publicly joked that he now cuts his own hair to save money and puts the savings directly into going long on ETH.

In June this year, after an ETH position was liquidated, Huang Licheng unusually did not immediately add margin to the account. This abnormal move quickly attracted market attention, and many began to speculate whether this long-running high-leverage gamble was finally coming to an end.

However, not long after, Huang Licheng deposited funds again and reopened long positions. To maintain his positions, this "Monkey Godfather" even sold dozens of BAYC NFTs at a loss to supplement margin, jokingly called "selling his 'monkeys' to stay afloat."

Such a track record has cemented Huang Licheng's label as an "on-chain contrarian indicator." After all, a trader who can experience hundreds of forced liquidations in over a year and still return to the table time and again is indeed uncommon. The community once joked that if one traded in the opposite direction of his positions, they might actually get a decent return.

Huang Licheng himself seems not to care much about the outside jokes. Previously, he made news for consecutive liquidations in a short period, and the on-chain monitoring account Lookonchain was also reported by the media. In response, Huang Licheng even posted a screenshot of the relevant news, joking: "Congratulations on making it to Taiwanese TV news."

Even more exaggerated is that for a long time, Huang Licheng has almost only deposited funds into his account and rarely withdrawn, and the funds transferred in often end up lost in trading. He has also posted a Hyperliquid fee bill of up to $2 million, showing his extremely high trading frequency.

This high-frequency, high-leverage trading style has become Huang Licheng's distinctive personal trading signature. He does not easily stop losses, preferring to be liquidated by the system rather than actively admitting defeat; once losses occur, he continues to deposit funds, add margin, or even increase positions. Huang Licheng himself once said in an interview that his investment approach is actually between investing and gambling, and stated on social media: "I never lose, I either win or I get liquidated."

And this "unlimited funds" high-leverage game naturally sparked a lot of speculation in the market. Some suspect his funding source is nearly unlimited, while others worry he will eventually truly hit zero.

But now, this unexpected comeback at least proves one thing: in extreme one-sided markets, high-leverage rolling positions can indeed produce astonishing wealth amplification effects. However, this strategy can also quickly give back hard-earned profits when the market reverses. Therefore, for Huang Licheng, the real test may no longer be how to pull the account from the bottom back to the peak, but how to hold on to this hard-won phased victory.

After all, in the high-leverage game, making money is only half the battle; keeping it is the other half.