James Wynn, a well-known crypto trader, has reportedly lost $25 million in Bitcoin after a high-leverage trade went against him. The liquidation occurred as part of a 240 Bitcoin position he held on the Hyperliquid trading platform, using 40x leverage.
Large-Scale Liquidation and Unrealized Losses
On June 4, on-chain data revealed that Wynn was liquidated for 240 BTC, valued at approximately $25 million, despite efforts to reduce risk by manually closing part of his position.
Wynn currently holds 770 BTC, worth over $80 million, with a liquidation price near $104,035.
Data from Hypurrscan indicates that Wynn is now facing an unrealized loss close to $1 million on his remaining leveraged positions.
Claims of Market Manipulation
Following the liquidation, Wynn alleged that the market was manipulated against him, calling for public attention and even asking for donations to support his efforts to expose manipulation.
Wynn has built a reputation for executing extremely high-risk trades, and his activity is publicly visible on Hyperliquid, where he regularly makes large, leveraged bets on Bitcoin’s price.
Previous Losses and Bold Bets
Wynn’s $25 million loss follows a string of high-risk trades. On May 24, he opened a $1.25 billion long position on Bitcoin using 40x leverage, just one day after incurring a $29 million loss.
By May 29, on-chain analytics platforms reported that Wynn had lost a total of $100 million in a single week. Despite this, he opened another $100 million leveraged long position earlier this week, demonstrating a continued appetite for high-risk trading.
Response From Industry Leaders
In the aftermath of Wynn’s losses, Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao proposed the idea of a dark pool perpetual DEX to help combat market manipulation in decentralized exchanges.
Zhao emphasized that transparency on DEXs can lead to front-running and liquidation issues, which dark pools might address by offering more privacy.
While dark pools are new to crypto, they are a long-standing feature in traditional finance, providing liquidity and anonymity to institutional investors, though they raise concerns about fairness and transparency.
