Former largest short whale shifts: $217 million ETH shorts retreat, $50 million bottom-fishing HYPE

[BlockBeats] In the past couple of days, an institution called Abraxas Capital has been making some big moves.

Two of their wallets have been aggressively closing ETH short positions, with the scale of liquidated positions reaching about $10.26 million. But don’t get it wrong—they weren’t liquidated by force. They still hold $51.57 million in short positions, with an average entry price of $3,522, and an unrealized profit of $6.68 million (a return of 130%). They’ve also earned $13.61 million just from funding rates.

Looking back, things get even more interesting: since early November, this institution has been consistently reducing their ETH short positions. Their holdings shrank from $267 million all the way down to the current $51.57 million, having closed a total of $217 million in positions. What did they do with the freed-up capital? Bought HYPE spot—currently holding about $53.84 million worth.

What’s even more impressive is that these two addresses had previously opened 22 short positions, and now have basically closed them all. There are only three short positions left with more than $200,000: on ETH, HYPE, and FARTCOIN. Keep in mind, this player was once the biggest short whale on a certain decentralized exchange.

From aggressively shorting, to rapidly reducing positions, to shifting into spot holdings—this series of moves is quite intriguing.