Crypto Trader’s $49M Short-Selling Win Erased by $24M Ether Loss in Seconds

The Hyperliquid wallet known as “pension-usdt.eth” was forced to close a 50,000 ETH short after Ether surged, with five liquidation orders contributing to the price increase during the unwind.
The wallet had maintained its bearish Ether position for roughly two months before Thursday morning’s market-wide rally triggered its liquidation. The trade resulted in a loss of nearly $24 million.
Before the loss, the address had ranked among the year’s more successful crypto short sellers, generating around $49 million from bearish bets. Its winning streak included nearly $6 million from a 60,000 ETH short closed in June, $3.6 million from a 1,400 BTC short that month and another $1.7 million from a Bitcoin short in March.
The latest liquidation erased roughly half of the profits the wallet had accumulated from those trades. Hyperliquid data shows the position was liquidated between 04:51:03 and 04:51:15 in five separate orders.
The first liquidation involved 9,989 ETH at $2,193, followed by 20,698 ETH at $2,209, another 15,830 ETH at $2,214 and 1,871 ETH at $2,236.
By the time the final 1,417 ETH was left, there were no buyers available. Hyperliquid therefore took the remaining position into its designated liquidity fund.
Ether gained $43 during the 12-second liquidation window. The trader’s forced purchases helped push the price higher, while each additional dollar of upside increased the cost of closing the remaining short.
The position had remained open for 1,445 hours, or slightly more than two months, during a period when Bitcoin largely traded below $65,000 and bearish positioning appeared relatively comfortable.
That setup changed after Wednesday’s Treasury bond-buyback announcement. Ether subsequently jumped 18% over 24 hours, while Bitcoin rallied from around $64,000 to nearly $70,000.
Hyperliquid’s leaderboard lists the wallet under the name “Penision Fund.” It currently holds just $35.61 and is down 100% over the past 30 days, recording $16.48 million in losses against $111.76 million in trading volume during that period.
The trader was not the biggest casualty of the rally. That distinction went to a $48.8 million Bitcoin position on Hyperliquid, amid roughly $2.74 billion in crypto short liquidations over 24 hours.
The liquidation wave was the largest recorded in data going back to 2021, highlighting the scale of the short squeeze triggered by the broader crypto market rally.