The Hyperliquid wallet known as pension-usdt.eth, which built a reputation over the summer for a 23-win streak that netted roughly $49 million shorting crypto, has been wiped out. On-chain tracker Lookonchain reported the wallet's entire 50,000 ETH short — worth about $106 million — was fully liquidated, resulting in a $23.9 million loss as ether ripped higher during Wednesday's broad market squeeze.
The unwind was violent even by Hyperliquid's standards: the position was forced closed in roughly 12 seconds across five separate liquidation events, with each successive chunk pushing ether's price higher and making the next chunk more expensive to close. The final 1,417 ETH of the position was absorbed by Hyperliquid's insurance fund once the wallet's margin was exhausted. The loss erased roughly half of the trader's prior profits and left the account effectively empty.
A Two-Month Bet That Finally Broke
Pension-usdt.eth had held a short position against ether for close to two months — roughly 1,445 hours by on-chain trackers' count — a stretch that had made the wallet one of the more closely watched short-side traders on Hyperliquid's public order book, where every position, entry price and liquidation level is visible in real time. That transparency is precisely what turned the wallet into a minor spectacle once ether's squeeze accelerated: traders could watch the liquidation cascade unfold live rather than learn about it after the fact.
Related: Top Ethereum Short Seller Loses $49M as ETH Squeeze Ends 23-Win Streak
A Meme Coin Complicates the Story
Hours after the liquidation, on-chain analytics account Bubblemaps flagged that the trader behind pension-usdt.eth had quietly launched a bundled meme coin called $PENSION the previous month — bundling being a launch pattern where a cluster of linked wallets control a large share of a new token's supply, often used to manufacture the appearance of organic demand before an eventual sell-off. Bubblemaps did not allege the token was directly tied to the ETH short-selling strategy, but the juxtaposition — a trader publicly known for high-conviction short bets also behind a bundled token launch — has fueled skepticism in replies to the thread about how much of the wallet's on-chain reputation was earned trading versus promoted.
Whether pension-usdt.eth returns to the short side remains to be seen. The wallet's trading history shows a pattern of rebuilding positions quickly after drawdowns, and Hyperliquid's open order book means the next attempt, if there is one, will be just as visible as this one.
