Whales on Hyperliquid Exchange Bet on Bitcoin's Decline More Than Ever Since the Bear Market Began. Are They Right?

The largest players on Hyperliquid, a decentralized perpetual contracts exchange, continue to place bets against BTC. According to the analytics service Glassnode, their net position turned short two weeks ago after seven months of long dominance, and the current shorts are the largest since October 2025, effectively marking the beginning of the entire bear market. Analysts add that the last time whales played so aggressively for a decline, the price soon dropped significantly. The problem is that, as I will demonstrate below, the "big" (and Glassnode) could be wrong.

Whales on Hyperliquid Bet That Bitcoin Will Drop Even Lower

The net position, which is the difference between long and short bets, currently stands at about 1,200 BTC in the negative, according to Glassnode data. At a price of $76,000 per BTC, this amounts to approximately $90 million—not much for an exchange where, as recently as October, open contracts on Bitcoin amounted to 38,000 units of this cryptocurrency.

On October 27, Glassnode analysts noted that the group went "underwater" for the first time since March of this year. Bitcoin was then priced around $80,000, and now it is 5% cheaper. Most of the shorts were added only at the turn of October and November this year.

According to data from October 26, large players held shorts worth $1.45 billion on Bitcoin and longs worth $1.22 billion. The catch is that Glassnode showed a position close to zero at that time. Everything depends on who we call a whale. One wallet, in fact, had a short position worth nearly $247 million, meaning it accounted for more than the entire surplus.

Large Shorts from a Year Ago Could Have Been the Work of One Player

The last time shorts clearly outweighed longs was in early October 2025, when the net position of whales dropped to about minus 4,500 BTC, nearly four times deeper than now. The date coincides with one of the most notorious transactions in Hyperliquid's history. On October 9 and 10, a mysterious and anonymous trader opened shorts on Bitcoin and Ethereum worth over a billion dollars, just before then-President Donald Trump announced the imposition of 100% retaliatory tariffs on goods from China. The market then experienced the largest wave of liquidations in its entire history, and the wallet (possibly of an insider?) made nearly $200 million in profit.

Depending on the source, the short on Bitcoin was then valued at 3,600 to 6,000 units, roughly the same as the entire net position from the chart. Glassnode does not disclose the list of wallets, so we cannot be sure. The warning that "the last time the market fell" may, however, largely rely on the bet of a single player.

Do Whales Have a Point?

On May 6, with a price over $82,000, Glassnode analysts wrote about a record position of whales betting on increases this year. Less than two months later, the daily close was $58,500, about 29% less. Since the peak of Bitcoin in October 2025, the advantage of longs has remained in this group for about two-thirds of the time. For me, what is more important is that whales sat on the bull side for most of the bear market, meaning they are not automatically right. However, it must be acknowledged that as early as July, they increasingly played long, even before the price ultimately shot up a month later.

Not every short, by the way, automatically means a belief that a given asset will lose value. A short position on a perpetual contract can also serve as a hedge for Bitcoins held elsewhere, and at the same time can generate passive income. In Hyperliquid's documentation, the base rate that longs pay to shorts under neutral conditions is 0.00125% per hour, or about 11.6% annually.

A large number of shorts also represents potential fuel in case of a rebound, as when the price rises, their owners are forced to buy back bitcoins. In the report from November 4, Glassnode placed the largest current cluster of liquidation levels around $87,000. Longs hang lower, in the range of $73,000 to $76,000, which is where the price is now and where bulls defend the 50-week average. The first test will be Tuesday's consumer price index (CPI) data in the USA, which will be published at 14:30 Polish time.

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