An on-chain wallet tracked by blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain has paid more than $3.4 million in funding fees while holding a 1x short position on 2.9 million $CXMT, a perpetual contract tied to Chinese DRAM manufacturer ChangXin Memory Technologies. At a notional value of $22.57 million, the position has been bleeding an average of roughly $170,000 per day in funding costs alone — separate from any losses on the underlying price move itself.
Funding fees are the mechanism perpetual futures markets use to keep a contract's price anchored to its underlying asset, with the side of the market that's more crowded — long or short — paying the other side periodically. A short position racking up this much in funding costs signals that demand to be long CXMT has persistently outweighed demand to be short since the position was opened, forcing the whale to keep paying to maintain a bet the market has been leaning against.
CXMT has drawn heavy speculative interest since its IPO
CXMT listed on July 27 in one of the largest Asian IPOs of the year, pricing at roughly ¥8.66 per share — about $1.28 — before Hyperliquid's pre-IPO perpetual contract for the stock began trading at a significant premium to that price. The contract has drawn sustained attention from both retail and whale traders since listing, with open interest climbing past $45 million shortly after the IPO and a running mix of long and short whale positions reflecting genuine disagreement over where a newly public Chinese semiconductor stock should be priced once trading through a perpetual futures wrapper rather than a traditional exchange.
A costly bet against the trend
Persistent one-sided funding costs of this scale are typically a sign that a position is fighting market consensus rather than anticipating a turn early — for a wallet already down $3.4 million just on fees, the underlying short would need a substantial price decline in CXMT to offset the funding bleed and turn the trade profitable overall. The position illustrates a risk specific to perpetual contracts on volatile, newly listed assets: even a directionally correct thesis can lose money if the market takes long enough to agree with it.
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Whether the whale closes the position or continues holding through the funding costs remains to be seen, but the trade stands as a reminder that in perpetual markets, being right eventually isn't the same as being right in time to avoid getting bled out by funding.
