Key Takeaways
- A Hyperliquid whale shorted 30,000 Nvidia perps worth $5.4 million at 10x after Huang’s Nov. 8 memo.
- Nvidia’s Hyperliquid perp traded near $179, about 4% under Nasdaq’s $186.64 Friday close.
- House Republicans want Huang at a Nov. 18 briefing, one day after Nvidia’s Nov. 17 earnings.
The Trade
Blockchain tracker Lookonchain flagged the position earlier today with Hyperliquid account data showing the wallet (labelled 0xc3ed…00dd) short 30,000 Nvidia perpetual futures, or perps, which are contracts with no expiry date that track an asset’s price. The position carries 10x leverage, an average entry of $181.33 and a notional value of about $5.37 million.
Trade fills show the wallet started selling at 22:51 UTC on Nov. 8 and finished at 00:14 UTC on Nov. 9, at prices between $180 and $182. That was a little over two and a half hours after Huang’s memo about his affair went live. At press time, the trade showed an unrealized gain of about $67,000, with liquidation near $289.
The bet did not stop there, and from 02:40 UTC, the same address opened a short on 200 BTC at 30x leverage, with an average entry of $75,303.60 and a value of roughly $15 million. When tracker Eyeonchain flagged the wallet, that leg stood at 100 BTC.
The owner is unknown, and nothing in the data shows whether the trader had any special insight.
Why Crypto Rails Moved First
The memo landed on a Sunday, with Nasdaq closed and crypto venues open for business. The Hyperliquid contract slipped below $180 while Wall Street was shut, against a Friday close of $186.64. Around the same time, tokenized NVDAX fell 3.55% over 24 hours to $180.42.
Hyperliquid’s market page showed about $189 million in 24-hour volume and around 637,000 contracts in open interest, worth roughly $114 million at a mark price near $179.
Weekend trading is one of the clearer selling points for this corner of crypto. Hyperliquid’s share of perps tied to real-world assets (RWAs) fell from about 80% to 26%, Bitcoin.com News reported last month, amid intensifying competition. Nvidia has its own complicated relationship with onchain stock trading, too, as it is among the companies that objected to OKXICE’s plan to tokenize shares.
What Huang Admitted and What He Didn’t
In his note to employees, Huang wrote:
I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.
He disclosed that he had been intimate with Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen and executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed, though the affair was not mentioned in the board’s statement.
The espionage element remains an allegation, but a report that circulated earlier claimed Alice Huang had been recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security to spy on the Nvidia chief. An Nvidia spokesperson told the Times that Jensen Huang’s interactions with Alice Huang were “not unusual” and that the company does not share classified information with customers.
The stakes reach well beyond the boardroom given that Megaspeed has been accused of helping restricted Chinese companies acquire Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips, and Washington limits exports of the company’s most advanced hardware to China. Huang has pushed for broader exports, arguing that it is better for the U.S. if the world builds on American technology.
The board has consequently opened an “independent investigation,” stating recently that:
[While the Board] has no reason to believe that either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised, the Board’s inquiry will examine all available information.
Regardless, Nvidia officials have told media outlets that Huang will keep leading Nvidia “without interruption.”
What the Short Needs From Here
With liquidation near $289, the position has plenty of room, and the calendar supplies the catalysts. For starters, Nvidia reports its third-quarter earnings on Nov. 17, and three Republican House committee chairs have asked Huang to attend a closed-door briefing the following day. Democratic lawmakers separately have called for an investigation or testimony.
The wallet’s second leg assumes the damage spreads, and many have tied Sunday’s swing in crypto to the Nvidia news and failed Iran talks, with bitcoin going as low as $73,900 before rebounding a bit. Whether that link holds will depend on how Nasdaq traders treat the story. Interesting week ahead!
