A Hyperliquid wallet identified as “pension-usdt.eth” was forced to close a 50,000 ETH short as Ether surged, with the liquidation unfolding through five separate orders that also added upward pressure to the price.
The wallet had maintained the Ether short for about two months before Thursday’s broad crypto rally triggered the position’s closure, resulting in a loss of nearly $24 million.
Before this trade went against it, the address had been one of the more profitable crypto short sellers of the year, earning roughly $49 million from bearish positions.
Its previous wins included nearly $6 million from a 60,000 ETH short closed in June, $3.6 million from a 1,400 BTC short during the same month and another $1.7 million from a Bitcoin short in March.
The latest loss wiped out about half of the wallet’s accumulated short-selling profits. Hyperliquid records show the liquidation took place over just 12 seconds, from 04:51:03 to 04:51:15.
The position was unwound in five stages, beginning with 9,989 ETH sold at $2,193, followed by 20,698 ETH at $2,209, 15,830 ETH at $2,214 and 1,871 ETH at $2,236.
The final 1,417 ETH could not immediately find buyers, prompting Hyperliquid to absorb the remaining position through its designated liquidity fund.
Ether climbed $43 during the 12-second liquidation. The trader’s forced buying helped accelerate the move, while the rising price made each successive portion of the short more expensive to close.
The position had remained open for 1,445 hours, or just over two months, while Bitcoin spent much of that period trading below $65,000. During that stretch, maintaining a bearish crypto position appeared relatively favorable.
The setup changed after Wednesday’s Treasury bond-buyback announcement. Ether subsequently surged 18% over 24 hours, while Bitcoin jumped from roughly $64,000 to almost $70,000.
Hyperliquid’s leaderboard identifies the wallet by the display name “Penision Fund.” The account had only $35.61 remaining and was down 100% over 30 days, with $16.48 million in losses against $111.76 million in trading volume during that period.
Despite the massive loss, the wallet was not the day’s largest liquidation casualty. That was a $48.8 million Bitcoin position on Hyperliquid.
Across the broader crypto market, short liquidations reached approximately $2.74 billion over 24 hours, marking the largest wave of forced short closures in records dating back to 2021.
