During the Dragon Boat Festival holiday that just passed, the whale James Wynn vividly performed a vivid drama of "not treating money as money" in the crypto. He also live-broadcasted on X the distance between the Bitcoin price and his long order liquidation price. At one point, it was only $20 away from a liquidation, attracting attention from the entire network.
Foreign version of Liang Xi, "begging" for the deposit
On May 30, James Wynn was liquidated for the first time due to high-leverage BTC long orders. At that time, his positions worth $100 million were forcibly liquidated, and Hyperliquidity Provider (HLP) realized a profit of about $530,000. After that, he opened new 40x leveraged long positions, and encountered partial or full liquidation again on May 30 and 31, respectively, and the liquidation price remained in the range of $102,000-103,400.
According to Lookonchain data, its PEPE and BTC long positions were partially liquidated, with cumulative losses of up to $9.36 million and total losses of $17.72 million. Subsequently, Wynn closed all positions and transferred the last approximately 460,000 USDC in the HyperLiquid account, completely clearing it out.
However, gamblers will not leave the table easily. Just one day after the short position, he redeemed the 126,116 HYPEs (worth about $4.12 million) that he had pledged before, and sold them at an average price of $32.7 to realize a profit of $1.05 million. This transaction was regarded as his "last hope", but soon after, he returned to the battlefield again.
On June 2, James Wynn once again opened a 40x leveraged BTC long order, holding 944.93 BTC, with an opening price of $105,890.3 and a liquidation price of $104,580, leaving very little room for risk. As the market fluctuated downward, he continued to add margin on the chain, and the liquidation price was adjusted to $104,360, $104,150, and finally pushed to around $103,610, only about $20 away from the actual market price.
When leverage was approaching the critical point of liquidation, Wynn launched a fund-raising request on social media, publicly stating: "If you want to fight against the market-making group and support me, please transfer USDC to the designated address." He promised that if the transaction was successful, the crowdfunding funds would be returned at a 1:1 ratio. This move quickly sparked controversy, and even Liang Xi cursed in James' comment area, saying that this behavior was "infringement."
According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin, he received more than $40,000 in donations in just two hours, of which $30,000 was transferred to HyperLiquid to cover his position, and the liquidation price was temporarily reduced to $103,610. He then added another 480,000 USDC margin, pushing the liquidation price to $103,637, and temporarily avoided liquidation.
Shouting out to CZ, sparking competition for PerpDEX
The current Bitcoin market is in a highly competitive stage, and the high leverage of contracts makes it a hotbed for liquidation hunting. Due to weak buying last week, low liquidity, and time factors such as summer weekends, large funds are more likely to push and pull prices in such a neutral environment.
Crypto analyst Willy Woo believes that although buying walls appear frequently on the surface, there may be repeated manipulation by the capital side behind it - such as the liquidation price of James Wynn.
As James continued to add margin, a small incident occurred. When the price of Bitcoin was close to the liquidation price of James' long orders, he took a screenshot and shouted to CZ, "What do you think of this market manipulation?" His words were quite excited.
Then, James directly tagged CZ and asked him to send him a private message. CZ also jokingly replied that James no longer had 1BNB to use the contact tool, advertising the application within the ecosystem.
After the private message incident, CZ posted a Twitter threads meaningfully, saying, "In light of recent market events, I think now may be a good time to launch a dark pool perpetual contract DEX. The idea of a dark pool perp DEX - shielding order books, delaying the display of margin changes, and even hiding transaction addresses and contract funding paths, can be technically achieved through encryption solutions such as ZK.
He believes that the current openness and transparency of the DeFi market has become a weakness for high-leverage traders. The on-chain order book, liquidation price and margin flow are all visible, making any large position a target of hunting. While CEX can still hide the identity of the account, the opponents faced by on-chain users may be the combined forces of market makers, robots, arbitrageurs and other copycat funds.
This highly echoes what happened to James Wynn, whose liquidation price was tracked all the way, watched on social media, and even the "1:1 crowdfunding" he initiated was analyzed in real time on the chain because the address was public, becoming a public experiment in the eyes of the market and the media.
CZ's high-profile discussion of dark pool perp DEX at this time is not a whim, but more like a deliberate signal release. As the James Wynn incident continues to ferment on the chain, the market attention and user activity of new generation perp DEX such as HyperLiquid continue to rise, and such platforms have begun to really touch the cake of CEX.
In the past, DeFi derivatives platforms have been seen as experiments with weak liquidity and rough experience. But this time, the perp DEX model represented by HyperLiquid is not only becoming more mature in terms of user trading experience, asset stability, and even "gambling" design, but also relying on liquidation mechanisms and high leverage strategies to create strong dramatic tension and community discussion on the chain.
As these decentralized platforms gradually come face to face with CEX's core business - high-frequency contract trading, the original boundaries of non-interference begin to blur, and both sides begin to take each other seriously.
Hyperliquid advertising spokesperson?
The controversy surrounding James Wynn is far more than just about his crowdfunding to replenish his deposit. What has also sparked widespread discussion in the community is the "sense of script" he presented behind a series of extreme operations.
Just before James Wynn redeemed HYPE for a profit of $1.05 million and was about to open a position again, he posted a ceremonial tweet announcing his temporary farewell to contract trading. What was even more eye-catching was his high praise for Hyperliquid, "Thank you Hyperliquid for your hospitality, your service is impeccable and your platform is excellent."
This thank you quickly aroused doubts, after all, this was the point where he had suffered multiple liquidations and huge losses on the chain. More people in the community speculated that James seemed to be more like a "plot character" deployed by Hyperliquid on the chain, using high-intensity leverage and high-frequency operations on social media to create unprecedented attention and discussion for the platform.
In fact, this suspicion is not groundless. In the past few weeks, there have been rumors in the community that James Wynn may have reversed hedged on other exchanges while opening an extremely leveraged position on Hyperliquid, creating influence through on-chain topics, indirectly boosting the platform's user activity, and attracting widespread attention to the HYPE token and its ecosystem.
As James revealed that multiple exchange accounts were blocked and funds were restricted, the outside world began to re-examine the authenticity of this rumor, and he also went all out in his subsequent remarks, saying directly:
“I support decentralization and oppose corruption. I support Hyperliquid and oppose market manipulation. You can’t catch me with anything. My wallet and transactions are clean. I have never received any promotion fees, nor have I done any pump and dump. I am just a meme coin gambler and HL expert who made his fortune on the chain.”
This self-defense was fierce and emotional, and it was more like actively labeling himself as a clean person on the chain - but in the eyes of the community, this high-profile expression of contrast was more like a carefully planned plot marketing.
BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes also posted on social media that "This may become one of the most successful trading platform marketing campaigns in the history of the crypto circle. In addition, this guy is likely to be hedging transactions in another anonymous address specifically to grab the next round of Hyperliquid airdrops."
As of June 3, the price of Bitcoin fell, and James Wynn's 40-fold long position turned into a floating loss again after a brief floating profit, while Hyperliquid continued to be the focus of public opinion in this on-chain drama.
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