The largest liquidation day in crypto history, who is the trader? Unveiling the true identification of the mysterious Whale Garrett Jin.

Author: @eyeonchains, X

Compiled by: White55, Mars Finance

A black swan emerged in the market yesterday, marking the largest liquidation day in crypto history, yet some managed to short accurately in advance, opening short positions exceeding 1.1 billion USD and earning over 80 million USD in 24 hours. Was this foresight or insider information? The true identity of the whales has attracted market attention.

A Threads post by the on-chain detective Eye unveils the identity of the whale. To start with the conclusion, it suggests that the true identity of the whale is a Chinese individual named Garrett Bullish, who has a diverse background. His experiences in the crypto field include serving as the Operations Director at Huobi (HTX), being the CEO of BitForex, which was embroiled in a trading scandal, and founding several crypto projects. Meanwhile, the source of his enormous funds also appears to be under suspicion.

Regarding this incident, Zhao Changpeng once retweeted the post hoping someone could cross-verify it. Lookonchain stated that Liquid Capital founder Jack Yi may know that the wallet 0x52d3, which sends ETH to obtain Gas, also transferred 1.31 million USDC to the Binance deposit address of Trend Research.

On-chain detective ZachXBT, who has credibility in the field of on-chain investigations, expressed doubts about the investigation up to the time of writing, stating, “You clearly stated in your post that the Bitcoin whale is Garrett Jin, but now you are telling me in your reply that these must come from multiple entities' BTC.”

The authenticity of this investigation cannot currently be verified. Below is the full analysis by Eye (slightly edited during translation), with Foresight News continuously monitoring subsequent developments:

The massive flow of funds has attracted attention.

An investigation into the mysterious Hyperliquid/Hyperunit whale identity shows that this whale holds over 100,000 bitcoins. Recently, he sold over $4.23 billion worth of bitcoins to purchase Ethereum, and also carried out a $735 million short order operation for bitcoins on the same platform.

During the period from August to September, this giant whale sold over 35,000 Bitcoins through the spot and perpetual contracts of Hyperliquid/Hyperunit, using a series of Bitcoin wallets to exchange for Ethereum. Meanwhile, multiple Ethereum addresses received a total of over 570,000 ETH, which were subsequently all deposited into the same Beacon deposit contract for staking.

Identity clues gradually emerge

By analyzing the whale address that opened a $735 million Bitcoin short, the on-chain detective Eye noticed it received transaction fees from a specific wallet. Tracing these transactions revealed that the flow of funds is associated with an address named “ereignis.eth”.

In-depth investigations show that “ereignis.eth” also owns another ENS name: “garrettjin.eth”, which points to X (Twitter) user @GarrettBullish.

Background of Garrett Jin

Garrett Jin graduated from Boston University with a degree in Economics in 2008, and began his career at China Construction Bank. In 2012, he founded Da Yo Trading (HK), and later served as the Operations Director at Huobi (HTX) until 2015. He then moved to Frankfurt, co-founded a healthcare platform, and left that position in 2017.

From 2017 to 2020, he served as the CEO of @bitforexcom. The exchange later fell into scandal, accused of faking trading volumes, and experienced a private key leak incident at the beginning of 2024, leading to approximately 57 million dollars being withdrawn. The exchange was subsequently issued a fraud warning by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission and ultimately shut down, leaving many users with asset losses.

Project history and funding sources

Garrett founded WaveLabs VC in 2020 during the Bitforex crash and launched multiple projects, including TanglePay, IotaBee, and GroupFi. The ENS name “ereignis.eth” (which means “event” in German) further confirms his association with these large-scale operations.

The investigation shows that the funds of this Hyperliquid/Hyperunit whale mainly come from Bitcoin withdrawn from exchanges like HTX and OKX a few years ago, which forms a suspicious link with his work experience at Huobi and the funds that disappeared in the Bitforex scam.

Current situation

Currently, Garrett still holds 46,295 Bitcoins (worth approximately $5.19 billion). In addition, he is also the founder of @XHash_com, a non-custodial Ethereum staking platform that may be used to introduce suspicious funds.

It is worth noting that after the relevant investigation was released, Garrett immediately removed @XHash_com from his X profile and changed his profile picture, while also modifying his Telegram privacy settings to hide previously public photos and phone numbers. On-chain detective Eye stated, “It seems that he does have something to hide.”