Mysterious Bitcoin Whale Behind a $500M+ Bet Might Be a 'Cybercriminal'

The bitcoin (BTC) and crypto space are closely following the moves of a mysterious BTC trader who opened a trading position worth more than $500 million. However, it might be that the trader is a cybercriminal using stolen funds.

On Tuesday, the whale already closed its BTC position, making, according to different estimations, up to $10 million on his short position with 40x leverage for 6,210 BTC—meaning that the trader was trying to make money on BTC's price decline with an initial investment of around $13 million. With such high leverage, if the price of BTC had increased by just 2%, the trader could have lost their entire investment.

However, at least one blockchain analyst claims that this trader is a cybercriminal.

"It’s funny watching [Crypto Twitter] speculate on the 'Hyperliquid whale' when in reality, it’s just a cybercriminal gambling with stolen funds," prominent blockchain sleuth ZachXBT said, referencing the Hyperliquid crypto exchange.

He didn’t disclose who the actor is, only providing an encrypted version of the identity using the SHA-256 hash function, which is impossible to decrypt because it’s not designed to be reversible. It could represent a wallet address, transaction ID, or other details that might help identify the trader.

However, ZachXBT also confirmed that the short trader is not related to Lazarus, the North Korean state-sponsored hacking group, which is said to be responsible for the Bybit hack, which is the largest crypto heist in history.

Before the suspected 'cybercriminal' closed their short position, a team of blockchain analysts launched a hunt for the whale, as some speculated it might be the Binance crypto exchange, or Eric Trump, the son of the U.S. President.

An X account behind the hunt initiative, CBB (bera era), had to admit that the hunt failed, saying, "We've lost the war, but it's been a long time since we had this much fun on the internet."

In either case, the mysterious trader is now making new bets, with their largest position—worth almost $3 million—in the MELANIA token, associated with the First Lady of the U.S., Melania Trump. The trader is betting that the price of this token will rise. At the time of writing, MELANIA is up 8% in a day while still being down 95% from its all-time highs in January.