Whale's $78M Crypto Bet Is Up $9.2M, Down $1.2M, and Up to Its Flippers 🐳

A crypto whale expanded its leveraged positions on Thursday, July 2, deploying more than $70 million in long exposure to Bitcoin and Solana while simultaneously opening a 10x short on Hyperliquid ($HYPE), bringing the combined position to over $78 million. The trades were sitting on roughly $9.2 million in unrealized profit at one point during the session, buoyed by a relief rally that followed a weaker-than-expected U.S. jobs report. Softer labor data fed expectations that the Federal Reserve would dial back its hawkish stance, lifting risk assets across crypto and equities; S&P and Nasdaq futures turned green on Google Finance as Bitcoin ($BTC) pushed toward $62,000 and Solana ($SOL) traded around $81.

Rate-hike pricing shifted alongside the move. According to the CME FedWatch tool, the odds of another interest rate increase dropped from 28% to 17%, a nearly two-fold decline. Traders, however, still placed an 83% probability on the Fed holding rates steady at the current 3.50%–3.75% range ahead of the end-of-July policy meeting. The FOMC Minutes are scheduled for release on Wednesday, July 8, after the July 4th holiday weekend, a period historically marked by thin liquidity that can amplify price swings.

The whale's portfolio flipped into the red later in the session, with unrealized losses of about $1.2 million as the $HYPE short position drew down roughly 70%. A hawkish Fed pause would leave the position exposed to further losses, while smart-money wallets increased Solana bids by 129% over the previous 24 hours. On Bitcoin, short positioning climbed to more than $2 billion with a 57% dominance ratio, signaling growing bearish bets even as the price attempted to reclaim $62,000 and set up conditions for a potential short squeeze. A sustained recovery, though, would require clearing overhead resistance at $62,300 and $65,000.