A mysterious whale who once made a high-profile $4 billion Bitcoin swap on Hyperliquid: possibly Garrett Jin, the founder of BitForex exchange.

On-chain analyst Eye recently revealed that between August and September, a Whale sold over 35,000 Bitcoins through the Spot and perpetual markets of Hyperliquid and Hyperunit, swapping for about 570,000 Ethers. This Whale is Garrett Jin, the former operating director of Huobi and founder of BitForex. Garrett Jin has previously faced investigations by multiple regulatory agencies, with controversies involving fund misappropriation and fake trading volume. On-chain signals indicate that funds may be organized through the ETH staking platform XHash.com. ZachXBT stated that it is currently insufficient to confirm it is the same person and is more likely a relationship with a fren.

On-chain detective Eye speculates that the mysterious Whale may be Garrett Jin through the staking contract.

On-chain detective Eye stated that this Whale sold over 35,000 BTC for ETH through the Spot and perpetual contract markets of Hyperliquid and Hyperunit between August and September, and distributed the 570,000 ETH obtained into seven wallets, ultimately depositing all of it into the same smart contract for Ether staking.

The staking contract was deployed by the address 0xBFBa…c14B, with its funding traced back to the wallet 0x1CB7…52E9, and the initial funds of that wallet came from ereignis.eth. After deployment, the first address to interact with this staking contract was indeed ereignis.eth, which deposited 32 ETH.

The Whale opened a $735 million BTC short position wallet 0xb317…83ae, with the transaction fee funds coming from 0x52d3…63E1. The address transferred 4.1 million USDC to the Binance deposit wallet 0xD5D7…1730 before the payment, and that Binance wallet also received $7.54 million from 0x9536…5215 earlier. Notably, the latter had previously transferred 40,000 USDT to ereignis.eth two weeks prior to establishing the short position.

Garrett Jin served as the early operations director of Huobi and founded the exchange BitForex, which is under investigation by multiple countries' regulators.

Further tracking shows that ereignis.eth is linked to a second ENS name garrettjin.eth, and connects to X (Twitter) user @GarrettBullish. Their personal experience includes:

2008~2011: Internship at China Construction Bank

2012~2014: Founded the Hong Kong company Da Yo Trading

2014~2015: Served as the Operations Director at Huobi (HTX)

2017~2020: Served as the CEO of BitForex, which was later investigated by multiple regulatory agencies for trading volume fraud and fund misappropriation incidents.

In February 2024, BitForex's hot wallet private key was hacked, resulting in a loss of approximately 57 million USD, after which the exchange ceased operations and was investigated by the police in Jiangsu, China. The Hong Kong SFC also issued a warning regarding suspected fraud. Other entrepreneurial experiences include FuLang Medical Germany GmbH, WaveLabs VC, TanglePay, IotaBee, GroupFi, etc.

In 2024, he established XHash.com, a decentralized institutional-grade ETH staking platform. On-chain data shows that a large amount of ETH transferred in through Hyperliquid may be staked on that platform to wash or consolidate the source of funds.

On-chain detective boldly speculates: Hyperliquid Whale's BTC comes from a vanished exchange.

It is speculated that the BTC held by the Hyperliquid whale mainly comes from the following address:

1KYUyiWdVmj7zZnFrJq3Ug5KRUGQRrp3rd

1KAt6STtisWMMVo5XGdos9P7DBNNsFfjx7

These BTC were withdrawn from exchanges such as HTX, OKX, ViaBTC, Bixin, and Binance approximately 7 to 8 years ago, suspected to be related to the disappearing funds of BitForex and the old assets of Huobi. As of now, Garrett Jin still holds about 46,295 BTC (, with a market value of approximately 5.19 billion USD ), distributed across multiple wallets.

ZachXBT: There is insufficient direct evidence of a connection between the two, and they are more likely to be fren.

In response, Binance founder CZ also stated on Twitter: “Uncertain of its validity. Hope someone can verify it.” However, another on-chain detective, ZachXBT, pointed out that this is not new information. Two days ago, analyst Emmett Gallic hinted at the news of Hyperliquid Whale transferring to Garrett Gin, but the direct transfer between the two was only 40,000 USDT. The other information in Eye's post is unverified, and it is speculated that it is more likely to be Garrett Gin's fren.

This article was about a mysterious Whale that boldly swapped 4 billion dollars worth of Bitcoin on Hyperliquid: possibly Garrett Jin, the founder of BitForex exchange, first appearing in on-chain news ABMedia.