Crypto Whale Bleeds $18.6M in Brutal Leveraged Short Squeeze – A Cautionary Tale
Another day, another 'smart money' trader learns gravity still applies to crypto markets.
The reckoning: A high-roller's overleveraged bearish bet backfires spectacularly as Bitcoin defies 'obvious' downside signals. The $18.6M loss serves as the latest proof that even whales get harpooned when fighting the trend.
Why it stings: Liquidations hit hardest when conviction overrides risk management—a recurring theme since the Mt. Gox era. Meanwhile, decentralized exchanges quietly pocket the fees from both sides of these doomed trades.
The kicker: This plays out hours before a surprise ETF inflow announcement, because of course it does. Wall Street's algo traders must be laughing into their cold brew—another crypto 'genius' outsmarted by leverage and hubris.
- Crypto whale @qwatio suffered $18.6M in losses after leveraged short positions on BTC, ETH, SOL, and XRP went wrong, leading to partial liquidation on Hyperliquid.
- A single XRP trade caused over $650K in realized losses, with the entry price far above market rebound levels, triggering forced liquidation.
- Through July 2025, @qwatio lost a staggering $334M, shrinking its balance from $16.3M to just $67K, one of the largest on-chain wipeouts of the year.
Crypto whales on X (formerly Twitter), going by the pseudonym @qwatio, have found themselves swimming deep into trouble after taking highly Leveraged short positions on major cryptocurrencies.
According to data from blockchain analytics firm Onchain Lens, the whale was partially liquidated on Hyperliquid, which is a decentralized perpetuals trading platform, after some of his bear-side bets moved significantly against his positions.
As the market began to recover, gambler @qwatio got partially liquidated on his short positions: $BTC (40x), $ETH (25x), $SOL (20x), and $XRP (20x).
Yesterday, he had a floating profit of $12M, but now he's back down to $1.3M.https://t.co/BfDod81eNt pic.twitter.com/npCXXtMCLu
The investors had taken extremely aggressive short positions on enormous leverage: 40x on Bitcoin (BTC), 25x on ethereum (ETH), and 20x on both Solana (SOL) and XRP. XRP, among them, stung the most, as the coin surged dramatically from the whale’s entry of $2.894, culminating in a forced liquidation, which meant over $650,000 of realized losses.
The XRP trade was part of an overall short book that had a value of approximately $18.6 million. But XRP wasn’t the only player; solana spiked too, contributing to the investor’s losses. Such high-risk transactions are indicative of @qwatio’s trading style, which has become notorious for aggressive leverage as well as sudden swings of capital.
Crypto Whale Loses $334M in Massive Leverage Liquidation
@qwatio’s latest liquidation is part of a series of costly misadventures. He lost $10M over 3 days in June 2025.
Through July, $334M of shorts got liquidated, dropping his balance from $16.3M to just $67K, one of the year’s largest on-chain drops.
Gambler @qwatio's massive short positions worth $334M were fully liquidated in just 3 hours, including: 1,743 $BTC ($211M), 33,743 $ETH ($102.3M), and 15M $FARTCOIN ($20.6M).
His wallet (0x916E) is now down nearly $25.84M in total losses. https://t.co/RwVCmLe4rK pic.twitter.com/Ed1jXyaYEY
Despite the tremendous losses, @qwatio first gained traction going long, aggressive 50x bets on BTC as well as ETH in March 2025. High-leverage bets were characteristic, beyond their obvious danger, for their promptness.
Days earlier, there had circulated speculations about a hypothetical U.S. strategic crypto reserve, on which he had bet millions of USDC on Hyperliquid. The alleged coincidence had members of the cryptocurrency ecosystem speculating about likely inside knowledge as the foundation of his aggressive wagers.
Although there has been no tangible proof of insider trading, the magnitude of his transactions, along with their timing, has generated sustained debate and attention.
High-Leverage Crypto Bet Ends in Total Collapse
@qwatio’s string of losses continues to perpetuate the massive risks of speculating on high leverage, especially when one considers a highly volatile asset like crypto. One of the best examples of just how fast one’s fortune evaporates when one speculates on things without effective controls on risks just happens to be his meltdown.
Although once he had a book of business in the tens of millions, his irresponsible manner has served as a warning about giving up self-discipline, overconfidence, and the peril of unsupervised leverage.
In 2025, as the year unfolds, @qwatio’s saga will continue to be one of the year’s most contested tales of 2025, a spectacle and warning.
