Shorting HYPE Lost $40 Million: How Much Ammo Does Meme's Top Bear loracle Have Left?

Original | Odaily News (@OdailyChina)

Author | Golem (@web3_golem)

Over the past month or two, the Meme market has been booming, with many Meme coins on-chain surpassing $100 million in market cap. It seems everyone on board is immersed in the joy of a Meme bull market, but there is one stubborn whale who insists on going against the trend, shorting the hottest Memes of this cycle under pressure.

This whale is loracle, the undisputed top Meme coin bear of this cycle.

According to on-chain data, loracle currently holds a 3x leveraged short position on PONS on Hyperliquid, with 27.75 million PONS, worth over $16.5 million, at an average entry price of $0.665. Due to the recent broad Meme pullback, he is sitting on an unrealized profit of about $1 million as of press time. At the same time, loracle is also the top CASHCAT bear, holding a 3x leveraged short position on CASHCAT with 36.3 million CASHCAT, worth over $6.2 million, at an average entry price of $0.2, with an unrealized profit of about $1.3 million as of press time.

When PONS hit its all-time high, loracle's PONS short position had a peak unrealized loss of over $6.9 million. Overseas KOL MLM had tried to assemble a team to "hunt" loracle, posting on X that he had raised an eight-figure sum, but never acted. loracle seemed unfazed by his position being public, and even publicly called on Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev to coordinate market makers to add liquidity to the PONS/USDG market.

Although loracle is currently profitable on his Meme shorts, a tally of all his on-chain positions and Hyperliquid historical P&L shows that loracle is still down about $25 million overall. loracle's main on-chain trading addresses:

1. 0xefe4c06b6d310978bead596e1798a4fc1d9d194b
2. 2.0x8def9f50456c6c4e37fa5d3d57f108ed23992dae

The famous "infinite ammo" contract gambler Machi Big Brother has a total loss of about $30 million on Hyperliquid so far. loracle's peak unrealized loss (about $70 million) even exceeded Machi's. Machi and loracle are two sides of the same coin—one loves going long, the other loves going short—but their common trait is that they both seem to have infinite ammo.

So, what is loracle's background, and where does his funding come from? Odaily News will dig into this whale's trading history and past in this article.

Both an Early Hyperliquid Contributor and the Biggest HYPE Bear

loracle is an early contributor to the Hyperliquid ecosystem. In 2024, he founded hypurr.fun, a Telegram-based launchpad for the Hyperliquid ecosystem, which generated significant wealth effects at the time. (Related reading: Hyperliquid Ecosystem Rising: A Quick Guide to the Pump-like Platform Hypurr)

After hypurr.fun collapsed, loracle turned to high-leverage perpetual contract trading on Hyperliquid. His style is aggressive, with position sizes often in the tens of millions of dollars.

Initially, loracle started with about $7.44 million in principal. By going long HYPE and trading BTC/ETH swings, after more than 10 months of effort, his account profit quickly reached about $42 million by early 2026. He once realized about $11.5 million in profit in a single week, becoming the largest on-chain HYPE bull at one point.

Subsequently, loracle diversified his trading, taking positions in NVDA, PAXG, crude oil, ZEC, TON, LIT, and others, combining longs and shorts. He was once called a crypto-native macro trader, and around May of this year, his cumulative profit remained near $37 million.

Shorting HYPE Lost Over $40 Million

But then things took a turn. The former Hyperliquid ecosystem contributor and biggest bull became the biggest HYPE bear, with nominal positions reaching over $100 million at their peak, and as of now, his position is still down about $9 million.

In late April, loracle opened his first HYPE short position worth about $11 million with 5x leverage, when HYPE was around $40. Entering May, HYPE continued to rise, and the "unconvinced" loracle kept shorting HYPE. By late May, reports indicated loracle's HYPE short position had reached $103 million.

In early June, HYPE hit an all-time high of $75, and loracle finally couldn't take the pressure and began to close his position. In just about one month, the over $40 million in perpetual contract profits that loracle had built over more than 10 months were completely wiped out. By the time he fully closed his position on June 2, he had lost over $46 million on HYPE.

After this major loss, loracle's contract operations gradually became erratic...

Blinded by losses, loracle pulled a classic retail move—he flipped to going long HYPE. According to on-chain data, after closing his HYPE short, on June 3, loracle opened a long position of 1.36 million HYPE, worth about $17 million, at an average entry price of $70.5. However, loracle not only opened this long at the very top but also closed it at the very bottom. In July, HYPE continued to fall, and finally, on July 30, loracle closed his HYPE long at an average price of $54.57, losing about $2.3 million.

Just days after closing his HYPE long, in early August, loracle opened a 3x leveraged HYPE short. At its peak, his HYPE short nominal position was worth over $54 million. As HYPE prices rose again in late August, loracle began to cover and reduce his short. As of now, loracle still holds 363,300 HYPE, worth about $28 million, with an unrealized loss of about $9 million and a liquidation price of $166.

Looking at historical total P&L, loracle has lost over $40 million trading HYPE, a loss that far exceeds his profits on BTC, ETH, and other cryptocurrencies and commodities.

The Source of Infinite Ammo Is Still HYPE: Once Staked Nearly 5 Million HYPE

As of press time, loracle's total contract losses are about $25 million. However, some on-chain analysts previously believed that loracle was not naked shorting HYPE, because as an early Hyperliquid contributor, he holds a large amount of HYPE spot, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, most of which is staked. Therefore, loracle's HYPE short positions were once considered a hedging operation.

This massive HYPE spot holding is also the source of loracle's infinite contract ammo. According to tracking by multiple on-chain analysts, the following two HYPE staking addresses belong to loracle:

1. 0xe44bd27c9f10fa2f89fdb3ab4b4f0e460da29ea8
2. 0xfae95f601f3a25ace60d19dbb929f2a5c57e3571

According to statistics, these two addresses had a peak of 4.948 million HYPE staked. At the current HYPE price, the total value is $385 million.

But now, the 3.35 million HYPE initially staked in address 2 has been fully withdrawn, and address 1 has only 96,940 HYPE left staked. Adding the 240,000 HYPE held in trading address 2 mentioned above, loracle currently holds about 336,000 HYPE, worth about $26.2 million.

Looking at it this way, loracle would have been better off consistently holding HYPE spot rather than trying to prove himself through contract trading. But this is all hindsight; in reality, his principal after the huge losses mainly came from selling HYPE spot.

Starting in April of this year, loracle began selling his HYPE holdings. In early April, loracle sold about 450,000 HYPE at an average price of $35, worth about $15 million. In May, loracle unlocked a total of 2.008 million HYPE across three occasions. In clearly traceable on-chain records, on May 21 (the day HYPE first broke its all-time high), he dumped 557,000 HYPE, worth about $33.35 million.

loracle can be described as "made by HYPE, broken by HYPE." The idea that as long as you don't leave the gambling table, you'll eventually turn things around—at least judging from the past experiences of Hyperliquid whales—doesn't hold up. Cases of going from the spotlight to a zeroed account are everywhere. Ultimately, how this former top HYPE bear and current top Meme bear will end up, Odaily News will continue to track.