Shorting XRP, Bitcoin, Ether, SOL Has This NEAR Trader up $20 Million

The Position, Line by Line

The trade was first flagged by onchain analysts, who noted that the trader’s NEAR long had crossed $20 million in floating profit after the token climbed more than 145% in a month. The account’s public Hyperliquid positions fill in the blanks and here is what the book looked like as of earlier today:

• NEAR long: 5,756,507 NEAR at an average entry of $2.353, worth about $34.1 million.
• Unrealized profit on NEAR: About $20.55 million, a return on margin of more than 1,500%.
• Leverage: 10x on a cross-margin account valued at roughly $7.97 million.
• Estimated liquidation price on NEAR: About $1.33.
• Short book: Seven coins at roughly $1.9 million to $2.3 million each.

NEAR is changing hands around $5.82 today, up about 12% on the day. In early September, the same token traded near $2.30.

Why Did NEAR Make a Run?

The timing of the entry matters more than size since the trader was in before NEAR’s biggest catalysts landed. The Bitwise NRR fund, described as the first U.S. spot NEAR exchange-traded fund (ETF), launched on Sept. 29 and pulled in nearly $58 million during its first week. For a token that once required an exchange account to own, that is a new door for brokerage money.

Usage has been climbing alongside price and NEAR Intents, the network’s cross-chain swap layer, logged $1.84 billion through the course of September. Cumulative Intents volume is now estimated at $31 billion to $33 billion across more than 30 chains.

Lastly, in terms of supply, a governance change in late 2025 cut NEAR’s maximum annual inflation from about 5% to roughly 2.5%, and a newer proposal would lower issuance again toward 1.6% over two years. Fewer new tokens and fresh ETF demand is the kind of mix leveraged traders hunt for.

Also, when bitcoin pushed toward $84,000 on Sunday, roughly $7.18 million in NEAR positions were liquidated, most of them shorts, per a liquidation heatmap shared by Kook Capital.

The Hedge Nobody Mentions

Alongside the NEAR long, the wallet runs shorts of about $2 million each on BTC, ETH, SOL, BNB, XRP, ADA and AVAX. That adds up to roughly $14.7 million of bets against the large-cap market.

Those shorts are mostly underwater, with the AVAX short alone showing a loss of about $623,000, ADA roughly $327,000 and SOL about $207,000. The bitcoin short was opened at an average of $79,550, so every move in bitcoin’s price toward $84,000 has cost the account money.

In total, the short side is down about $1.33 million, a small fraction of the NEAR gain.

It is a different style from the all-in directional whales Hyperliquid is known for, as Bitcoin.com News recently tracked an ether whale liquidated for $69 million who reloaded 30 minutes later, and a $32 million bitcoin short betting on the anniversary of last year’s crash.

What Breaks the Trade?

NEAR would need to fall about 77% from current levels to hit the estimated $1.33 liquidation mark. Still, 10x leverage on a $34 million position means a 10% NEAR pullback would erase about $3.4 million of the gain in a single move.

Analysts have also warned that NEAR’s relative strength index has at times pushed above 70 to 80, a zone that often signals overbought conditions. However, historically speaking, ETF flows can reverse as quickly as they arrive.