- Analysts suspect the recent market crypto crash was an orchestrated event, as many whalish shorts were suspiciously attributed to insider trading.
News outlets quickly blamed the weekend’s crypto market crash that brought Bitcoin (BTC) back to $102K per coin on Binance, followed by the dip of other altcoins on President Donald Trump’s recent tariff retaliation against China. However, many analysts and market observers suspected other factors at play during the nearly $20 billion market liquidations, which amplified the trend.
Shorts Timed Just Before the Crypto Market Crash
The crypto market is currently rife with speculations of foul play as the smoke cleared on Sunday. Fingers pointed at insider trading because some whales placed their shorts just before the crash.
Onchain Lens, citing Hypurrscan data, revealed that a “Bitcoin OG” has heavily profited from the event. The trader with around $11 billion worth of BTC who came into the spotlight two months ago boldly opened about $900 million shorts in Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH) amid October’s anticipated “Uptober” phenomenon, where most assets typically undergo a significant rebound after the usually tame September market.
The mysterious whale increased its short position on BTC at Hyperliquid (HYPE) while taking the leverage from 6x to 8x. It involved 5,000 BTC worth $604 million at $120,761.6 entry point with a liquidation price of $133,760. Eventually, the trader netted roughly $80 million from the bet.
Whale Trade Traced to Barron Trump
Bitcoin Magazine’s Vivek Sen also exposed a short position opening 30 minutes before Trump’s market-shaking announcement, earning $88 million. Founder and CEO of the 51 Group, Mark Baumann, called the coincidence “insane” and stated that the crypto community should track the funds until they undergo KYC (Know Your Customer) during cash out.
Additionally, Baumann opined that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) should open an investigation into the matter. By Sunday, Coin Bureau traced the trade from the president’s son, Barron Trump.
“Word on the street is that big CEXs (Centralized Exchange) auto liquidation of collateral tied to cross-margined positions is why lots of alts got smoked on the move down,” former Bitmex CEO Arthur Hayes chimed in. “Congrats to all you stink bidders. We won’t be seeing those levels any time soon on many high-quality alts.”
Blaming Binance
The pseudonymous Egrag Crypto, a popular technical analyst on X, broke his silence on the propensity of the market dip. He noted that he usually doesn’t comment on events outside his technical analysis, but his social media account’s numerous DMs (Direct Messages) forced him to address the subject.
According to him, “nothing major happened” because XRP remains on track as it just hit his non-leveraged targets at $2.65, $2.55, and $2.40. Like others, he raised the massive shorting that accelerated the weekend’s crypto market crash. Moreover, he claimed that many traders increased their positions at the onset of the crash, as if they had insider knowledge.
Interestingly, Egrag pointed out that Binance likely orchestrated the crash. The price of XRP slipped as low as $0.78 in the exchange. This fueled previous allegations of price manipulation in the exchange, which the technical analyst said justified the company’s former CEO, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao’s jail time.
Since Egrag’s key supports held amid the crypto market crash, he still believes the asset is on its way to a rally beyond its all-time high of $3.84 eight years ago.
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