Onchain sleuth ZachXBT mentioned he had recognized the mysterious whale who profited $20 million from extremely leveraged trades on Hyperliquid and GMX as a British hacker going by the identify William Parker.
In response to ZachXBT’s March 20 X submit, Parker — who was beforehand often known as Alistair Packover earlier than altering his identify — was arrested final yr for allegedly stealing round $1 million from two casinos in 2023.
Parker additionally made headlines a decade in the past for allegations of hacking and playing, ZachXBT mentioned.
“It’s abundantly clear WP/AP has not discovered his lesson through the years after serving time for fraud and can probably proceed playing,” ZachXBT mentioned.
Supply: ZachXBT
Associated: Hyperliquid ups margin necessities after $4 million liquidation loss
ZachXBT mentioned his findings are based mostly on a cellphone quantity offered by an individual who allegedly obtained a cost from the whale dealer’s pockets tackle.
He additionally mentioned that public pockets addresses related to the whale dealer obtained proceeds from previous onchain phishing schemes.
Cointelegraph has not independently verified ZachXBT’s claims.
Large leveraged bets
The mysterious whale rose to prominence after profiting roughly $20 million from extremely leveraged trades — in some circumstances with as much as 50x leverage — on decentralized perpetuals exchanges Hyperliquid and GMX.
On March 12, the dealer deliberately liquidated an roughly $200 million Ether (ETH) lengthy, inflicting Hyperliquid’s liquidity pool to lose $4 million.
In the meantime, the whale earned earnings of some $1.8 million.
Hyperliquid mentioned the liquidation was not an exploit however relatively a predictable consequence of how the buying and selling platform operates below excessive circumstances. The DEX later revised its collateral guidelines for merchants with open positions to protect in opposition to such occurrences sooner or later.
On March 14, the whale took one other multimillion-long place, this time on Chainlink (LINK).
Perpetual futures, or “perps,” are leveraged futures contracts with no expiry date. Merchants deposit margin collateral — usually USDC (USDC) for Hyperliquid — to safe open positions.
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